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
On the contrary, it is immoral to procreate a human being for any
secondary reason, to bring a being into the limitations of humanity, the
conditions made for him by his parentage; the fundamental reason why the
possible freedom and spontaneity of a human being is limited is that he
was begotten in such an immoral fashion. That the human race should
persist is of no interest whatever to reason; he who would perpetuate
humanity would perpetuate the problem and the guilt, the only problem
and the only guilt. The only true goal is divinity and the union of
humanity with the Godhead; that is the real choice between good and
evil, between existence and negation. The moral sanction that has been
invented for coitus, in supposing that there is an ideal attitude to
the act in which only the propagation of the race is thought of, is no
sufficient defence. There is no such imperative in the mind of man; it
is merely an ingenious defence of a desire, and there is the fundamental
immorality in it, that the being to be created has no power of choice
with regard to his parents. As for the sexual union in which the
production of children is prevented, there is no possible justification.
Sexual union has no place in the idea of mankind, not because ascetism
is a duty, but because in it woman becomes the object, the cause, and
man does what he will with her, looks upon her merely as a “thing,” not
as a living human being with an inner, psychic, existence. And so man
despises woman the moment coitus is over, and the woman knows that she
is despised, even although a few minutes before she thought herself
adored.
The only thing to be respected in man is the idea of mankind; this
disparagement of woman (and himself), induced by coitus, is the surest
proof that it is opposed to that idea of mankind. Any one who is
ignorant of what this Kantian “idea of mankind” means, may perhaps
understand it when he thinks of his sisters, his mother, his female
relatives; it concerns them all: for our own sakes, then, woman ought to
treated as human, respected and not degraded, all sexuality implying
degradation.
But man can only respect woman when she herself ceases to wish to be
object and material for man; if there is any question of emancipation it
should be the emancipation from the prostitute element. It has never
until now been made clear where the bondage of woman lies; it is in the
sovereign, all too welcome power wielded on them by the Phallus. There
can be no doubt that the men who have really desired the emancipation of
women are the men who are not very sexual, who have no great craving for
love, who are not very profound, but who are men of noble and spiritual
minds. I am not going to try to palliate the erotic motives of man, nor
to represent his antipathy to the “emancipated woman” as being in any
sense less than it is; it is much easier to go with the majority, than,
as Kant did, to climb, painfully and slowly, to the heights of
isolation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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