Otto Weininger and Sex and Character

Otto Weininger was a young, Austrian philosopher who did not gain recognition until after his suicide at age 23. Raised a Jew, Weininger converted to Christianity at age 20, as such, his only published book, Sex and Character, has a tone of religious anti-Semitism and delves deep into his misogynistic beliefs of gender and sex. His views and “genius” notably influenced Ludwig Wittgenstien , Jame Joyce (Ulysses), and Sigmund Freud.

Sex and Character theorizes that all living things possess both masculine (exclusively moral, right, productive and positive) qualities and feminine (amoral, wrong, unproductive and negative) qualities. It is here that Weininger found basis for his religious change, and that Hitler found justification for his extermination, as the book of Judaism states that it is a “feminine religion”, therefore amoral, and in contrast to Christianity – the masculine religion. He believed that “male” and “female” were not two entirely separate beings, but beings defined by either a predominantly male condition (articulate elements of thought separate from clear feelings) , or a predominantly female condition (sentimental, where thinking and feeling are the same). This, he believed, accounted for homosexuality, something all exude to some degree, as all men are, to some degree, women, and visa versa.

The largest focus of Sex and Character is that of genius: it’s distinction from talent, who possesses it vs. who can access it, and what that means. He believes that talent is hereditary, whereas genius is individual, and that ill-balanced individuals, particularity women, have not the capacity to appreciate, or act upon, their genius. “Woman,” he writes, “has no direct consciousness of [genius], she borrows a kind of imperfect consciousness from man.”

Sex and Character, however, was not written with a tone of complete hate and disregard for woman. Weininger believes that, despite the inferiority of woman, because every man possesses some feminine condition, no man has the right to denounce or defame a woman. However, he believes that freedom, in the sense that man deserves, can not be allowed to women as they consider themselves most free when most bound as the man is, essentially, in charge of all affairs.