Sex & Character: Authorised Translation from the Sixth German EditionWeininger, Otto
Philosophy
Sex & Character: Authorised Translation from the Sixth German Edition
Weininger, Otto
Character; Sex; Sex (Psychology); Sexual ethics
The erotics of the Jew are sentimentalism, and their humour is satire.
Perhaps examples may help to explain my interpretation of the Jewish
character, and I point readily to Ibsen’s King Hakon in the
“Pretenders,” and to his Dr. Stockmann in “The Enemy of the People.”
These may make clear what is for ever absent in the Jew. Judaism and
Christianity form the greatest possible contrasts; the former is bereft
of all true faith and of inner identity, the latter is the highest
expression of the highest faith. Christianity is heroism at its highest
point; Judaism is the extreme of cowardliness.
Chamberlain has said much that is true and striking as to the fearful
awe-struck want of understanding that the Jew displays with regard to
the person and teaching of Christ, for the combination of warrior and
sufferer in Him, for His life and death. None the less, it would be
wrong to state that the Jew is an enemy of Christ, that he represents
the anti-Christ; it is only that he feels no relation with Him. It is
strong-minded Aryans, malefactors, who hate Jesus. The Jew does not get
beyond being bewildered and disturbed by Him, as something that passes
his wit to understand.
And yet it has stood the Jew in good stead that the New Testament seemed
the outcome and fine flower of the Old, the fulfilment of its Messianic
prophecies. The polar opposition between Judaism and Christianity makes
the origin of the latter from the former a deep riddle; it is the riddle
of the psychology of the founder of religions.
What is the difference between the genius who founds a religion and
other kinds of genius? What is it that has led him to found the
religion?
The main difference is no other than that he did not always believe in
the God he worships. Tradition relates of Buddha, as of Christ, that
they were subject to greater temptations than other men. Two others,
Mahomet and Luther, were epileptic. Epilepsy is the disease of the
criminal; Cæsar, Narses, Napoleon, the greatest of the criminals, were
epileptics.
The founder of a religion is the man who has lived without God and yet
has struggled towards the greatest faith. How is it possible for a bad
man to transform himself? As Kant, although he was compelled to admit
the fact, asked in his “Philosophy of Religion,” how can an evil tree
bring forth good fruit? The inconceivable mystery of the transformation
into a good man of one who has lived evilly all the days and years of
his life has actually realised itself in the case of some six or seven
historical personages. These have been the founders of religions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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