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
In the same way, in the sexual relations of two women, one always plays
the male and the other the female part, a fact of deepest significance.
Here we encounter, in a most unexpected fashion, the fundamental
relationship between the male and female elements. In spite of all
sexually intermediate conditions, human beings are always one of two
things, either male or female. There is a deep truth underlying the old
empirical sexual duality, and this must not be neglected, even although
in concrete cases there is not a necessary harmony in the anatomical and
morphological conditions. To realise this is to make a great step
forward and to advance towards most important results. In this way we
reach a conception of a real “being.” The task of the rest of this book
is to set forth the significance of this “existence.” As, however, this
existence is bound up with the most difficult side of characterology, it
will be well, before setting out on our adventurous task, to attempt
some preliminary orientation.
The obstacles in the way of characterological investigation are very
great, if only on account of the complexity of the material. Often and
often it happens that when the path through the jungle appears to have
been cleared, it is lost again in impenetrable thickets, and it seems
impossible to recover it. But the greatest difficulty is that when the
systematic method of setting out the complex material has been proceeded
with and seems about to lead to good results, then at once objections of
the most serious kind arise and almost forbid the attempt to make types.
With regard to the differences between the sexes, for instance, the most
useful theory that has been put forward is the existence of a kind of
polarity, two extremes separated by a multitude of intermediate
conditions. The characterological differences appear to follow this rule
in a fashion not dissimilar to the suggestion of the Pythagorean,
Alcmæon of Kroton, and recalling the recent chemical resurrection of
Schelling’s “Natur-philosophie.”
But even if we are able to determine the exact point occupied by an
individual on the line between two extremes, and multiply this
determination by discovering it for a great many characters, would this
complex system of co-ordinate lines really give us a conception of the
individual? Would it not be a relapse to the dogmatic scepticism of Mach
and Hume, were we to expect that an analysis could be a full description
of the human individual? And in a fashion it would be a sort of
Weismannistic doctrine of particulate determinants, a mosaic psychology.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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