Gender and character

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Gender and Character , first edition 1903
Otto Weininger 1903, frontispiece of the 3rd edition of Gender and Character , 1904. Heliogravure by Richard Paulussen, Vienna, with facsimile signature

Gender and character is the main work of the Austrian philosopher Otto Weininger . The 23-year-old published it in May 1903, shortly before his suicide. It is one of the classic documents of Viennese Modernism .

Emergence

In the 1980s, two sealed parcels were found in the archive of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna, which Otto Weininger had deposited there in the early summer of 1901 and in the spring of 1902 to preserve the priority of his ideas. The titles were Eros and Psyche. Biological-psychological study and the theory of life . These two works are the original versions of Weininger's book Gender and Character .

As early as the autumn of 1901 Otto Weininger tried to get his work Eros und Psyche to go to press , which he presented to his professors Friedrich Jodl and Laurenz Müllner as a dissertation in 1902 . There was a meeting with Sigmund Freud , but he did not recommend the work to a publisher, as he had hoped. Weininger's dissertation was accepted by his professors and he became a doctor of philosophy.

After months of focused work in 1903 was released in June a basic investigation - Sex and Character , which wanted to put the "sex ratio" in a "new light" in the Vienna publishing house Braumüller & Co . This was the text of Weininger's doctoral thesis, expanded by three decisive chapters: “The essence of women and their meaning in the universe”, “Judaism” and “Woman and humanity”, in which Weininger's tendencies towards anti-Semitism and misogyny are found and unfolded into uncontrolled metaphysics .

The book was not received negatively, but the sensation that Weininger had expected and hoped for did not materialize. Weininger died by suicide on October 3, 1903 in Vienna, in Beethoven's house where he died on Schwarzspanierstrasse .

content

Title page of the first edition from 1903

In his main work Otto Weininger revealed an attitude that was sharply opposed to everything Jewish, despite his Jewish descent, and at the same time proved to be an advocate of an attitude of mind that was hostile to women and the body. The values ​​of higher life are just as inaccessible to women as the world of ideas. The more feminine the woman, the more she embodies a purely mindless lust. Only through the man does the woman receive a second-hand life.

Weininger combines this with anti-Semitic views: The Jew, he claims, is “always lustful and horny” because of his “female” essence; "The born communist "; by nature “a matchmaker ” and not actually pious, since he “couldn't believe”. Nevertheless, a small hope dawned . The Jewish non-existence is "state before being" and therefore the Jews must "fight against themselves, inwardly defeat Judaism in themselves" in order to become people, i.e. men. Jesus Christ too "was a Jew, but only in order to most completely overcome Judaism in himself". Therefore “he is the greatest person” who would have conquered his “special original sin ” - namely to be a Jew - through the “complete negation ” of his being. Weininger understands "the Jew" as a male Jew, "the Jewess" is only mentioned in one passage in his text.

Weininger explicitly associates Judaism with femininity, while Christianity with masculinity. From this he derived the equation that “the Jew” is a woman. Since both women and Jews are only sexuality, only body and matter, devoid of any spirit, soul or morality and incapable of sexual asceticism, they pose a threat. According to Weininger, society must overcome the feminine elements and adapt to the masculine orientate. He calls for a new humanity that should be constructed on a new masculinity. A correspondence between masculinity and social order is postulated. Sentences like "The phallus is the fate of the woman" - "The lowest man is still infinitely high above the highest woman" - "The Jew does not sing" - "The absolute Jew is soulless" - "All fécondité is just disgusting" - “Traveling is immoral” is one of the building blocks of his thought structure.

“A new Christianity is pushing towards the light towards the new Judaism; humanity waits for the new founder of religion, and the struggle presses for a decision as in year one. Between Judaism and Christianity, between business and culture, between woman and man, between species and personality, between worthlessness and value, between earthly and higher life, between nothingness and godhood, humanity again has a choice. These are the two poles: there is no Third Reich. "

- Weininger in gender and character

Man And Woman

Weininger dedicated gender and character to the “theoretical and practical solution” to the “women's question”. His work appeared with a universal claim to interpretation. The focus is on the gender difference between men and women. The two poles between which Weininger's worldview is stretched in his book are called “the man” and “the woman”. The book is based on the gender contrast. From this grows a dualistic philosophy that is at the service of a sexual mythology.

Weininger tried his hand at the definition of masculine and feminine against the background of the assumption that there is a proportion of both in all living things. “Female” or “male” never appear in their pure form, but always in a mixture. Weininger placed the masculine at one end of a scale. In the conception of woman and instinct on the one hand and man and spirit on the other hand, he assigned “woman” a mental and moral inferiority at the other end of the scale. In his chapter on the “essence of woman and its meaning in the universe” Weininger writes that the “pure man” is “the image of God, the absolute something, woman, also woman in man, is the symbol of nothingness: that is the meaning of women in the universe, and so man and woman complement and condition each other. ”He describes women by listing their shortcomings: women have no ego, no soul, no morals, no thoughts, they are not for spiritual orientation and creative productivity capable, they "have no existence and no essence, they are not, they are nothing". Women received existence "only when the man affirmed his own sexuality," said Weininger. If the man denies his sexuality, which Weininger sees as a “remedy”, then the woman disappears and with her Judaism, which Weininger equates with femininity. According to Weininger, stable masculinity can only be achieved by negating the feminine, because the “deepest fear in man” is the “fear of woman”, the “fear of the alluring abyss of nothingness”.

Theory of bisexuality

In his theory of physical and mental bisexuality , Weininger ties in with a long tradition in which androgyny was described as human nature. He himself refers u. a. on Indian myths (see Ardhanarishvara ) and the "banquet" of Plato. In the 19th century theories of physical and mental bisexuality were widespread, Weininger worked out a theory of bisexuality. The theory was also put forward before Weininger by the Berlin doctor Wilhelm Fliess , who was friends with Sigmund Freud and through whom Freud learned of this idea, whereupon a dispute over priorities broke out between the two scientists.

Weininger assumes that every human being has bisexual traits: “All peculiarities of the male sex can somehow, even if they are poorly developed, also be demonstrated in the female sex; and also the sexual characters of women are all somehow present in men, even if they are retarded in their training. ”Weininger sees the“ ideal man ”and the“ ideal woman ”as ideal types“ that do not exist in reality ”. Rather, there are “innumerable gradations” and “sexual intermediate forms” between the sexes: “And likewise there are only all possible mediating levels between the perfect man and the perfect woman, approaches to both”. In his remarks, Weininger relies on embryology , which has established a "sexual undifferentiation of the first embryonic system in humans, plants and animals".

Jacques Le Rider criticizes Weininger's approach because he only cites research results that support his thesis. For example, Weininger cites Martin Rathke's publications from 1825 and quotes Aristotle as well as proverbs and sayings. However , he does not mention Gregor Mendel's research work on heredity or the discovery of chromosomes . Le Rider believes: "The knowledge on which his law of bisexuality is based is largely out of date."

Weininger derives the "law of sexual attraction" from his thesis of human bisexuality. Percentages of the opposite sex were maintained in people to different degrees and the laws of sexual attraction would result from the complementary ratios. Each individual tries to complete their incomplete percentage of "M" or "W". In abstraction, this would mean that a whole man (M) and a whole woman (W) always strive for one another, or seek their sexual complement. So if a man consists of 3/4 M and 1/4 W, he will be attracted to a woman who is made up of 1/4 M and 3/4 W, and vice versa.

Instead of perceiving the possibility of freedom from gender roles and their constraints, Weininger calls for them to be " overcome ". Just as the man has to eradicate his parts of "W", the same applies to the woman. The degree of their emancipation depends on the degree of their "M" status. “Gender and character” reaches its peak in the formulas: “Woman has no ego, woman is nothing”.

In Weininger's last diary entries it says: "The hatred of women is nothing other than the hatred of one's own, not yet overcome sexuality" - which has given rise to suspicions about homosexuality.

Women's movement

Weininger uses his theory of bisexuality to explain the women's movement . He is of the opinion that “a woman's need for and ability to be emacipated is only based on the proportion of M she has”. According to Weininger, “the need for liberation and equality with men is only evident in male women”, whereas the ideal type “W” “does not feel any need for emancipation”. However, according to Weininger, even the “most masculine feminine” has no more than 50% of “M”, to which the feminine owes its entire meaning.

Weininger sees the women's movements as the result of recurrent phases in history in which “male” women and “female” men were born. He speaks out against the women's movement, which induces women to study, write, etc., which has "induced the desire for education" and which has brought women's studies into fashion. For this reason he calls for the abolition of the women's movement: "Away with party formation, away with untrue revolutionization, away with the entire women's movement, which in so many creates unnatural and artificial, basically mendacious endeavors." The demands of women's rights activists for the active and passive suffrage rejects Weininger arguing from that you can also "children, imbeciles, criminals" confers no political voice and [should], is from the lively fear that they female by that kept "the wife of one thing Only influence could be harmed. "

effect

Gender and Character, 26th edition (1925)

Weininger achieved controversial fame with his book; The psychiatric experts considered him insane, the philosophical world dubious and the literary ingenious. With his "fundamental investigation" he became the epitome of a misogynist, a Jew hater and an apostle of chastity. A large readership identified with his anti-feminist and anti-Semitic theories, and until the 1930s, more and more new editions testified to his success. In Italy Weininger u. a. Recognition by Julius Evola and Giorgio de Chirico and his reflections were imitated by the French writer Paul Vogt in his work Le sexe faible (1908). Some of Weininger's ideas were taken up by Karl Kraus and August Strindberg and had a decisive influence on the work of Elias Canetti , Robert Musil , Georg Trakl and Ludwig Wittgenstein and thus lastingly influenced Austrian intellectual history.

Weininger's remarks on Judaism form one of the most literarily effective versions of anti-Semitic ideology in the history of modern anti-Semitism. In his description of “the Jew” he chooses categories of extreme negativity. Stereotypical judgments taken from anti-Semitic propaganda are used to mark “Judaism” against Christianity. Weininger's formulations often appeal to anti-Semitic resentments. Judaism is one of the most important disruptive factors in the social order. In contrast, Christianity represents the "absolute negation" of Judaism.

Although there were always Jews in fin de siècle Vienna who turned away from their religion (this phenomenon could also be documented in other religions), gender and character contained particularly strong anti-Semitic tendencies, also influenced by their father. Weininger saw his time not only as "the most Jewish, but also the most effeminate of all times" . He called it "the time of the most gullible anarchism , the time without a sense of state and law". This alone secures an undisputed place in the run-up to fascism .

At the time the book was published, a discourse about alleged feminization and nervousness among men in Austria was particularly pronounced. It was assumed that this nerve weakness produced feminine men and male women and could only be overcome through particularly masculine actions on a national (e.g. war) and private level (e.g. by "conquering" the female body). Jews were perceived as particularly weak and feminine. According to Ernst Hanisch, this crisis of masculinity found its “strongest and most influential expression” in gender and character . Hanisch is of the opinion that Weininger's work can be understood "as a desperate male cry for help, as an expression of primal fear of women, as a single protest against feminization, ultimately: as an admission of weakness."

While it took nine years until the 600 copies of the first edition of Sigmund Freud's “Traumdeutung” (published 1900) were sold, the second edition of “Sex and Character” appeared in November 1903, one month after Weininger's suicide and the third in January 1904. Three more editions were printed in 1904. The book became a bestseller in Germany and Austria. Between 1903 and 1912 twelve of the total of 28 editions of the work were published, all by Braumüller-Verlag. The Braumüller publishing house printed its own advertising brochures with numerous homage, including that of Karl Kraus, the publisher of the torch , who was at the head of the Weininger supporters: "A woman who admirers the arguments of his contempt for women enthusiastically agrees!" Kraus also dedicated an obituary to Weininger , in which he wrote: "This suicide was committed in a fit of mental clarity [...] Weininger had reasons, metaphysical and religious, to throw away life at the beginning of a great career."

The list of admirers and admirers is long and includes a. Arthur Trebitsch , Alfred Kubin , Elias Canetti , Walter Serner , Heimito von Doderer . Georg Simmel , Henri Bergson , Fritz Mauthner , Ernst Mach and Alois Höfler dealt with Weininger's thoughts in colleges and counter-writings. The art collector and writer Gertrude Stein read Weininger in English translation and forced the work on many of her friends, almost as if it were a manual for their own views. Ernst Bloch called Weininger's book “a single anti-utopia of woman” , the writer Karl Bleibtreu said that Weininger's death was basically a “scornful rejection of our age” and wrote: “Philosophical certainty of immortality every soul monad can seduce you, better to immediately seek out the unknown land beyond the threshold of consciousness than to grapple with our pettiness and baseness for longer. "

Sigmund Freud wrote in 1909 about gender and character : “The castration complex is the deepest unconscious root of anti-Semitism [...] The arrogance of women also has no stronger unconscious root. Weininger [...] in a much-noticed chapter treated the Jews and women with the same enmity and showered them with the same insults. As a neurotic, Weininger was completely under the control of infantile complexes; the relationship to the castration complex is what the Jew and the woman there have in common. ”In 1930, Theodor Lessing criticized Weininger's“ wildly moved ”book and his teaching,“ which is nothing but a great natural game of pathological ones in his book Der Jewish Selbsthass in a case study on Weininger Excessiveness and brutal arbitrariness. I mean the crude and rude doctrine of Judaism. ”Lessing writes that it is the key to the tremendous fate of tragic self-hatred and describes Weininger as“ Jewish Oedipus and Heraklite nature rolled into one ”.

The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein defended him in 1931 against George Edward Moore : "It's true, he is cranky, but he is great and cranky ... His huge error, that is great."

The Nazis ended the triumph of the book. Gender and character were forbidden because its author was Jewish. In the long monologues in the Fuehrer's headquarters in Wolfsschanze , Adolf Hitler said one evening that his Munich friend Dietrich Eckart had assured him that there was only “one decent Jew ... Otto Weininger, who took his own life when he realized that the Jew lives from the disintegration of other nationalities . ”In fascist Italy , Sesso e Carattere functioned as a war machine against“ Jewish-degenerate ” psychoanalysis . At the University of Bologna people read about Weininger at the time of fascism. Julius Evola used Weininger in Metafisica del sesso as a shield against Freud . "Weininger made many things clear to me," said Benito Mussolini to Emil Ludwig .

After that, Weininger's book fell into oblivion , the rediscovery first began in Italy in the circle of the nuova destra , then also in France . In 1980 the Munich publishing house Matthes & Seitz published a reprint of gender and character , which was accompanied by numerous reviews . Nike Wagner is of the opinion that "the treatise on women" has become a "document on the understanding of men's fears and men's wishes, a document that suggests the emancipation of men even more urgently than that of women." Jacques Le Rider wrote in 1985 in his Book The case of Otto Weininger. Roots of anti-feminism and anti-Semitism : “Weininger's book appears as the completion of a century of ' counter-enlightenment ', which reached its climax around the turn of the century, especially in Vienna, where women are more exposed than ever to the oppression of the patriarchal family [. ..] and anti-Semitism is supported by biology. "

Prepress and editions

  • Eros and Psyche. Biological-psychological study. Manuscript deposited at the Academy of Sciences in Vienna on June 4, 1901 to preserve priority, sealed letter No. 376
  • To the theory of life. Manuscript deposited in the Academy of Sciences in Vienna on April 1, 1902 to preserve priority, sealed letter No. 390
  • Difference between I-people and world people. Excerpts from "On the theory of life", with a foreword by Hannelore Rodlauer: On the discovery of unknown manuscripts from Weininger's student days (in: Weininger's night), Europa Verlag, Vienna 1988
  • Eros and Psyche. Studies and Letters 1899–1902. (Ed. Hannelore Rodlauer) Meeting reports of the philosophical-historical class of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Vienna 1990.
  • About Eros and Psyche. Dissertation. Vienna 1902. (lost)
  • Gender and character. A principal investigation. Wilhelm Braumüller, Vienna / Leipzig 1903; second, several times improved edition, with a foreword by Arthur Gerber (dated November 1903), 1904 (published in 1903); third with the second identical edition (without a preface by Gerber), "with the portrait of the author in Heliogravure", 1904; 10th edition, 1908 in archive.org , 11th edition, 1909 in archive.org ; Reprint (in the appendix: Weininger's diary, letters from August Strindberg and contributions from today's perspective), Matthes & Seitz , Munich 1980 & 1997; ISBN 3-88221-312-4 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hannelore Rodlauer: From "Eros and Psyche" to "Gender and Character". Publishing house of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 1987.
  2. ↑ Otto Weininger. Work and effect. Edited by Jacques Le Rider u. Norbert readers. Vienna 1984.
  3. ↑ Hannelore Schröder: Anti-semitism and Anti-feminism Again: The Dissemination of Otto Weininger's Sex and Character in the Seventies and Eighties. In: Erik CW Krabbe, Renee Jose Dalitz, Pier A. Smit (Eds.): Empirical logic and public debate: essays in honor of Else M. Barth. Radopi, Amsterdam 1993, ISBN 978-90-5183-592-2 , pp. 305-318.
  4. ^ Ann Pellegrini: Whiteface Performances: 'Race,' Gender and Jewish Bodies. Jonathan Boyarin, Daniel Boyarin (Eds.): Jews and Other Differences: The New Jewish Cultural Studies. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 1997, ISBN 0-8166-2750-9 , p. 109 .
  5. ↑ Maria Irod: Antisemitism, antifeminism and the Crisis of German Culture in Early 20th Century. In: Studia Hebraica. 9-10, 2010-2010, pp. 330-339.
  6. ↑ Joachim Riedl: Woman, Jew, I - Away with everything! In: Die Zeit , December 6, 1985; Also in: Weininger's Night. Europa Verlag, Vienna 1988.
  7. ↑ Otto Weininger: Gender and Character. A principal investigation . Sarastro 2012, ISBN 978-3-86471-207-4 , p. 79.
  8. ↑ a b c d e Misha Kavka: The "Alluring Abyss of Nothingness": Misogyny and (Male) Hysteria in Otto Weininger . In: New German Critique . 66, No. 3, Fall 1995, pp. 123-145. doi : 10.2307 / 488590 .
  9. ^ Nike Wagner : Sex and Character, Die Zeit No. 48, Hamburg, November 21, 1980; Unabridged in: Weiningers Nacht, Europa Verlag, Vienna 1988.
  10. ↑ Nancy A. Harro wit and Barbara Hyams: Jews & Gender: Responses to Otto Weininger . Temple University Press, Philadelphia 1995, ISBN 978-1-56639-248-8 , p. 3 .
  11. ^ Heinz-Jürgen Voss : Making Sex Revisited: Deconstruction of gender from a biological-medical perspective. Transcript Verlag, Bielefeld, 2010.
  12. ^ Jacques Le Rider : Otto Weininger as Anti-Freud (in: Dream and Reality. Exhibition catalog). Vienna 1985.
  13. ^ Weininger, Gender and Character. P. 8.
  14. ^ Weininger, Gender and Character. P. 9.
  15. ↑ Weininger, Sex and Character , p. 9 f.
  16. ^ Weininger, Gender and Character. P. 7.
  17. ^ Jacques Le Rider: The case of Otto Weininger. Roots of anti-feminism and anti-Semitism. Löcker, Vienna 1985, ISBN 978-3-85409-054-0 , p. 67.
  18. ↑ Le Rider: The Otto Weininger case. P. 68.
  19. ↑ Weininger, Gender and Character , p. 34 ff.
  20. ^ Weininger: Gender and character. P. 80.
  21. ↑ Weininger, Sex and Character , p. 87.
  22. ^ Weininger: Gender and character. P. 88.
  23. ↑ Weininger, Sex and Character , p. 90 f.
  24. ^ Weininger: Gender and character. P. 87.
  25. ^ Weininger: Gender and character. P. 87 f.
  26. ^ Weininger: Gender and character. P. 461.
  27. ↑ Nike Wagner : Gender and Character. unabridged in: Weininger's Night. Europa Verlag, Vienna 1988.
  28. ^ George L. Mosse : The Image of Man: The Creation of Modern Masculinity. Oxford University Press, New York 2006, ISBN 978-0-19-510101-0 , p. 103 .
  29. ↑ a b Ernst Hanisch: The contrast picture: The nervous, the feminized man. In: Masculinity: Another 20th Century Story. Böhlau, Vienna 2005, ISBN 978-3-205-77314-6 , pp. 26-28 .
  30. ^ Jacques Le Rider: The case of Otto Weininger. Roots of anti-feminism and anti-Semitism. Löcker, Vienna 1985, ISBN 978-3-85409-054-0 , p. 50.
  31. ↑ Sigmund Freud: Analysis of the phobia of a five-year-old boy. 1909, p. 21, note 15.
  32. ↑ Jean Radord: The Woman and the Jew: Sex and Modernity. In: European Judaism. 29, No. 1, Spring 1996, pp. 75-87.
  33. ^ Theodor Lessing: The Jewish self-hatred. Matthes & Seitz, Munich 1984 (first edition 1930), ISBN 978-3-88221-347-8 , p. 81.
  34. ^ Adolf Hitler: Monologues in the Führer Headquarters. 1941-1944. Ed. Werner Lochmann. Hamburg 1980
  35. ^ Jacques Le Rider: The case of Otto Weininger. Roots of anti-feminism and anti-Semitism. Löcker, Vienna 1985, ISBN 978-3-85409-054-0 , p. 122.