Otto Weininger
Encyclopedia
Otto Weininger was an Austria
n philosopher. In 1903, he published the book Geschlecht und Charakter (Sex and Character), which gained popularity after his suicide at the age of 23. Today, the book is generally viewed as misogynistic
and antisemitic in academic circles.
goldsmith
Leopold Weininger and his wife Adelheid. After attending primary school and graduating from secondary school in July 1898, Weininger registered at the University of Vienna
in October of the same year. He studied philosophy
and psychology
but took courses in natural science
s and medicine
as well. Weininger learned Greek
, Latin
, French
and English
very early, later also Spanish
and Italian
, and acquired passive knowledge of the languages of August Strindberg
and Henrik Ibsen
(i.e., Swedish
and Danish
/Norwegian
).
In the autumn of 1901 Weininger tried to find a publisher for his work Eros and the Psyche—which he submitted to his professors Jodl and Müllner 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
.
In 1902 Weininger went to Bayreuth where he witnessed a performance of Richard Wagner
's Parsifal
, which left him deeply impressed. Via Dresden
and Copenhagen
he made his way to Christiania (Oslo
) where he for the first time saw Henrik Ibsen
's liberation drama Peer Gynt
on stage. Upon his return to Vienna Weininger suffered from fits of deep depression. The decision to take his own life gradually took shape in his mind; after a long discussion with his friend Artur Gerber, however, Weininger realized that "it is not yet time".
In June 1903, after months of concentrated work, his book Sex and Character
—a fundamental investigation—an attempt "to place sex relations in a new and decisive light"—was published by the Vienna publishers Braumüller & Co. The book contained his thesis to which three vital chapters were added: (XII) The Nature of Woman and her Relation to the Universe, (XIII) Judaism, (XIV) Women and Humanity.
While the book was not received negatively, it did not create the expected stir. Weininger was attacked by Paul Julius Möbius
, professor in Leipzig
and author of the book On the Physiological Deficiency of Women, and was accused of plagiarizing. Deeply disappointed and tortured by doubts, Weininger left for Italy.
Back in Vienna he spent his last five days with his parents. On October 3, he took a room in the house in Schwarzspanierstraße 15 where Ludwig van Beethoven
died. He told the landlady that he was not to be disturbed before morning since he planned to work and then to go to bed late. This night he wrote two letters, one addressed to his father, the other one to his brother Richard, telling them that he was going to shoot himself.
On October 4, Weininger was found mortally wounded, having shot himself through the heart. He died in Wiener Allgemeines Krankenhaus at half past ten that morning. Otto Weininger was buried in the Matzleinsdorf Protestant Cemetery
in Vienna. The epitaph by his father translates:
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." Elsewhere Wittgenstein put the same point by saying that if one were to add a negation
sign before the whole of Sex and Character, one would have expressed a great truth; that is, he did not disagree with Weininger point by point but as a whole. The themes of the decay of modern civilization and the duty to perfect one's genius occur repeatedly in Wittgenstein's later writings.
propaganda
, despite the fact that Weininger actively argued against the ideas of race that came to be identified with the Nazis.
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
n philosopher. In 1903, he published the book Geschlecht und Charakter (Sex and Character), which gained popularity after his suicide at the age of 23. Today, the book is generally viewed as misogynistic
Misogyny
Misogyny is the hatred or dislike of women or girls. Philogyny, meaning fondness, love or admiration towards women, is the antonym of misogyny. The term misandry is the term for men that is parallel to misogyny...
and antisemitic in academic circles.
Life
Otto Weininger was born on April 3, 1880 in Vienna as a son of the JewishJudaism
Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...
goldsmith
Goldsmith
A goldsmith is a metalworker who specializes in working with gold and other precious metals. Since ancient times the techniques of a goldsmith have evolved very little in order to produce items of jewelry of quality standards. In modern times actual goldsmiths are rare...
Leopold Weininger and his wife Adelheid. After attending primary school and graduating from secondary school in July 1898, Weininger registered at the University of Vienna
University of Vienna
The University of Vienna is a public university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world...
in October of the same year. He studied philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
and psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
but took courses in natural science
Natural science
The natural sciences are branches of science that seek to elucidate the rules that govern the natural world by using empirical and scientific methods...
s and medicine
Medicine
Medicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....
as well. Weininger learned Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
, Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
, French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
and English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
very early, later also Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
and Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, and acquired passive knowledge of the languages of August Strindberg
August Strindberg
Johan August Strindberg was a Swedish playwright, novelist, poet, essayist and painter. A prolific writer who often drew directly on his personal experience, Strindberg's career spanned four decades, during which time he wrote over 60 plays and more than 30 works of fiction, autobiography,...
and Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of prose drama" and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre...
(i.e., Swedish
Swedish language
Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...
and Danish
Danish language
Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...
/Norwegian
Norwegian language
Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...
).
In the autumn of 1901 Weininger tried to find a publisher for his work Eros and the Psyche—which he submitted to his professors Jodl and Müllner as his thesis in 1902. He met Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
, 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
Protestantism
Protestantism is one of the three major groupings within Christianity. It is a movement that began in Germany in the early 16th century as a reaction against medieval Roman Catholic doctrines and practices, especially in regards to salvation, justification, and ecclesiology.The doctrines of the...
.
In 1902 Weininger went to Bayreuth where he witnessed a performance of Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
's Parsifal
Parsifal
Parsifal is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner. It is loosely based on Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, the 13th century epic poem of the Arthurian knight Parzival and his quest for the Holy Grail, and on Chrétien de Troyes' Perceval, the Story of the Grail.Wagner first conceived the work...
, which left him deeply impressed. Via Dresden
Dresden
Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....
and Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...
he made his way to Christiania (Oslo
Oslo
Oslo is a municipality, as well as the capital and most populous city in Norway. As a municipality , it was established on 1 January 1838. Founded around 1048 by King Harald III of Norway, the city was largely destroyed by fire in 1624. The city was moved under the reign of Denmark–Norway's King...
) where he for the first time saw Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of prose drama" and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre...
's liberation drama Peer Gynt
Peer Gynt
Peer Gynt is a five-act play in verse by the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen, loosely based on the fairy tale Per Gynt. It is the most widely performed Norwegian play. According to Klaus Van Den Berg, the "cinematic script blends poetry with social satire and realistic scenes with surreal ones"...
on stage. Upon his return to Vienna Weininger suffered from fits of deep depression. The decision to take his own life gradually took shape in his mind; after a long discussion with his friend Artur Gerber, however, Weininger realized that "it is not yet time".
In June 1903, after months of concentrated work, his book Sex and Character
Sex and Character
-Male activity and female passivity: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...
—a fundamental investigation—an attempt "to place sex relations in a new and decisive light"—was published by the Vienna publishers Braumüller & Co. The book contained his thesis to which three vital chapters were added: (XII) The Nature of Woman and her Relation to the Universe, (XIII) Judaism, (XIV) Women and Humanity.
While the book was not received negatively, it did not create the expected stir. Weininger was attacked by Paul Julius Möbius
Paul Julius Möbius
Paul Julius Möbius was a German neurologist who was born in Leipzig. Prior to entering the medical field in 1873, he studied philosophy and theology at the Universities of Leipzig, Jena and Marburg....
, professor in Leipzig
Leipzig
Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...
and author of the book On the Physiological Deficiency of Women, and was accused of plagiarizing. Deeply disappointed and tortured by doubts, Weininger left for Italy.
Back in Vienna he spent his last five days with his parents. On October 3, he took a room in the house in Schwarzspanierstraße 15 where Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...
died. He told the landlady that he was not to be disturbed before morning since he planned to work and then to go to bed late. This night he wrote two letters, one addressed to his father, the other one to his brother Richard, telling them that he was going to shoot himself.
On October 4, Weininger was found mortally wounded, having shot himself through the heart. He died in Wiener Allgemeines Krankenhaus at half past ten that morning. Otto Weininger was buried in the Matzleinsdorf Protestant Cemetery
Matzleinsdorf Protestant Cemetery
, Matzleinsdorf Evangelical Cemetery is a historic Protestant cemetery located in the Favoriten district of Vienna , the capital city of Austria.-History and details:...
in Vienna. The epitaph by his father translates:
- "This stone closes the resting place of a youth whose spirit never found rest on earth. And when he had made known the revelations of his spirit and of his soul, he could no longer bear to be among the living. He sought out the death precinct of one of the greatest in Vienna's Schwarzspanier house, and there destroyed his bodily existence."
Influence on Wittgenstein
Ludwig WittgensteinLudwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein was an Austrian philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He was professor in philosophy at the University of Cambridge from 1939 until 1947...
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." Elsewhere Wittgenstein put the same point by saying that if one were to add a negation
Negation
In logic and mathematics, negation, also called logical complement, is an operation on propositions, truth values, or semantic values more generally. Intuitively, the negation of a proposition is true when that proposition is false, and vice versa. In classical logic negation is normally identified...
sign before the whole of Sex and Character, one would have expressed a great truth; that is, he did not disagree with Weininger point by point but as a whole. The themes of the decay of modern civilization and the duty to perfect one's genius occur repeatedly in Wittgenstein's later writings.
Physiognomy
Weiniger's friend Artur Gerber gave a description of Weiniger's physiognomy in "ECCE HOMO", preface to Taschenbuch und Briefe an einen Freund (E. P. Tal & Co., Leipzig/Vienna 1922):Weininger and the Nazis
Isolated parts of Weininger's writings were used by NaziNazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
propaganda
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
, despite the fact that Weininger actively argued against the ideas of race that came to be identified with the Nazis.
Weininger's works
- Weininger, Otto. Geschlecht und Charakter: Eine prinzipielle Untersuchung, Vienna, Leipzig 1903, original German text, English translation
- Weininger, Otto. Collected Aphorisms, Notebook and Letters to a Friend. Martin Dudaniec (trans.) Free Download(PDF) 2002. ISBN 0-9581336-2-X English translation
- Weininger, Otto. Sex and Character: An Investigation Of Fundamental Principles. Ladislaus Löb (trans.) Indiana University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-253-34471-9
- Weininger, Otto. A Translation of Weininger's Über die letzten Dinge (1904/1907)/On Last Things. Steven Burns (trans.) Edwin Mellen Press, 2001. ISBN 0-7734-7400-5
Further reading
- Nancy Harrowitz, Barbara Hyams (eds). Jews and Gender: Responses to Otto Weininger. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995 ISBN 1-56639-249-7. Table of Contents & Chapter 1
- Abrahamsen, David. The Mind and Death of a Genius. New York: Columbia University Press, 1946.
- Sengoopta, Chandak. Otto Weininger: Sex, Science, and Self in Imperial Vienna University of Chicago Press, 2000 ISBN 0-226-74867-7
- Stern, David G. and Béla Szabados (eds). Wittgenstein Reads Weininger. New York: Cambridge University PressCambridge University PressCambridge University Press is the publishing business of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by Henry VIII in 1534, it is the world's oldest publishing house, and the second largest university press in the world...
, 2004. ISBN 0-521-53260-4
External links
- Weininger Photos and Gravesite
- Testimony by Weininger's friend Artur Gerber
- Sex & character Cornell University Library Historical Monographs Collection.
- Works by Weininger, on the Internet ArchiveInternet ArchiveThe Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...