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
If he is going to treat her as she wishes, he must have intercourse with
her, for she desires it; he must beat her, for she likes to be hurt; he
must hypnotise her, since she wishes to be hypnotised; he must prove to
her by his attentions how little he thinks of himself, for she likes
compliments, and has no desire to be respected for herself.
If he is going to treat her as the moral idea demands, he must try to
see in her the concept of mankind and endeavour to respect her. Even
although woman is only a function of man, a function he can degrade or
raise at will, and women do not wish to be more or anything else than
what man makes them, it is no more a moral arrangement than the suttee
of Indian widows, which, even though it be voluntary and insisted upon
by them, is none the less terrible barbarity.
The emancipation of woman is analogous to the emancipation of Jews and
negroes. Undoubtedly the principal reason why these people have been
treated as slaves and inferiors is to be found in their servile
dispositions; their desire for freedom is not nearly so strong as that
of the Indo-Germans. And even although the whites in America at the
present day find it necessary to keep themselves quite aloof from the
negro population because they make such a bad use of their freedom, yet
in the war of the Northern States against the Federals, which resulted
in the freedom of the slaves, right was entirely on the side of the
emancipators.
Although the humanity of Jews, negroes, and still more of women, is
weighed down by many immoral impulses; although in these cases there is
so much more to fight against than in the case of Aryan men, still we
must try to respect mankind, and to venerate the idea of humanity (by
which I do not mean the human community, but the being, man, the soul as
part of the spiritual world). No matter how degraded a criminal may be,
no one ought to arrogate to himself the functions of the law; no man has
the right to lynch such an offender.
The problem of woman and the problem of the Jews are absolutely
identical with the problem of slavery, and they must be solved in the
same way. No one should be oppressed, even if the oppression is of such
a kind as to be unfelt as such. The animals about a house are not
“slaves,” because they have no freedom in the proper sense of the word
which could be taken away.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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