Otto Weininger
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Otto Weininger (April 3, 1880 – October 4, 1903) was an Austrian philosopher. In 1903, he published the book Geschlecht und Charakter (Sex and Character) which gained popularity after Weininger's suicide at the age of 23. Today, the book is often dismissed as sexist, homophobic and anti-Semitic, especially by those in the academic community; however, it continues to be held up as a great work of lasting genius and spiritual wisdom by others, most notably the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein.
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Life
Otto Weininger was born the son of the Jewish goldsmith Leopold Weininger and his wife Adelheid. Weininger was a gifted student. Upon graduating from secondary school in July 1898 he registered at the University of Vienna. He studied mainly philosophy and psychology but also the natural sciences and medicine. He was fluent in many languages.
In the autumn of 1901 Weininger tried to find a publisher for his work “Eros and the Psyche” - which he submitted as his thesis in 1902. He met Sigmund Freud who, however, did not recommend the text to a publisher. His professors accepted the thesis and Weininger received his Ph.D. degree. Shortly thereafter he became proudly and enthusiastically a Protestant.
After travelling around Europe for some time he returned to Vienna. At the time he began to suffer fits of depression.
In June 1903, after months of concentrated work, the Vienna publishers Braumüller & Co published his book “Sex and Character - a fundamental investigation” - an attempt “to place sex relations in a new and decisive light”.
While the book was not received negatively, it did not create the stir he expected.
On October 3, he took a room in the house in Schwarzspanierstraße 15 where Beethoven died. The next morning Weininger was found lying fully dressed on the floor, unconscious, with a wound in the left part of his chest. He was rushed to hospital, where he died, at the age of twenty-three.
Sex and Character
In his book Sex and Character, Weininger argues that all people are composed of a mixture of the male and the female substance, and attempts to support his view scientifically. The male aspect is active, productive, conscious and moral/logical, while the female aspect is passive, unproductive, unconscious and amoral/alogical. Weininger argues that emancipation should be reserved for the "masculine woman", e.g. some lesbians, and that the female life is consumed with the sexual function: both with the act, as a prostitute, and the product, as a mother. Woman is a "matchmaker". By contrast, the duty of the male, or the masculine aspect of personality, is to strive to become a genius, and to forego sexuality for an abstract love of the absolute, God, which he finds within himself.
A significant part of his book is about the nature of genius. Weininger argues that there is no such thing as a person who has a genius for, say, mathematics, or music, but there is only the universal genius, in whom everything exists and makes sense. He reasons that such genius is probably present in all people to some degree.
In a separate chapter, Weininger, himself a Jew who had converted to Christianity in 1902, analyzes the archetypical Jew as feminine, and thus profoundly irreligious, without true individuality (soul), and without a sense of good and evil. Christianity is described as "the highest expression of the highest faith", while Judaism is called "the extreme of cowardliness". Weininger decries the decay of modern times, and attributes much of it to feminine, and thus Jewish, influences. By Weininger's reckoning everyone shows some femininity, and what he calls "Jewishness".
Weininger shot himself in the house in Vienna where Beethoven had died, the man he considered one of the greatest geniuses of all. This made him a cause célèbre, inspired several imitation suicides, and turned his book into a success. The book received glowing reviews by August Strindberg, who wrote that it had "probably solved the hardest of all problems", the "woman problem".
Influence on Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein read the book as a schoolboy and was deeply impressed by it, later listing it as one of his influences and recommending it to friends (Ray Monk: Ludwig Wittgenstein, The Duty of Genius, 1990). However, Wittgenstein's deep admiration of Weininger's thought was coupled with a fundamental disagreement with his position. Wittgenstein writes to G.E. Moore: "It isn't necessary or rather not possible to agree with him but the greatness lies in that with which we disagree. It is his enormous mistake which is great." The themes of the decay of modern civilization and the duty to perfect one's genius occur repeatedly in Wittgenstein's later writings.
Weininger and the Nazis
Isolated parts of Weininger's writings were used by Nazi propaganda, despite the fact that Weininger actively argued against the ideas of race that came to be identified with the Nazis. Adolf Hitler is reported to have said something to the effect of "There was only one decent Jew, and he killed himself." Nevertheless, Weininger's books were denounced by the Nazis, most probably because Weininger encouraged women to think for themselves, and to determine their own future, which went directly against the Nazi idea of the role of women in society.
