Sex & Character / Authorised Translation from the Sixth German Edition

by Otto Weininger

That which must be fought against is not an affair of ever unchangeable existence and essence: it is something which can be put an end to, and which ought to be put an end to.

This is the way, and no other, to solve the woman question, and this comes from comprehending it. The solution may appear impossible, its tone exaggerated, its claims overstated, its requirements too exacting. Undoubtedly there has been little said about the woman question, as women talk of it; we have been dealing with a subject on which women are silent, and must always remain silent—the bondage which sexuality implies.

This woman question is as old as sex itself, and as young as mankind. And the answer to it? Man must free himself of sex, for in that way, and that way alone, can he free woman. In his purity, not, as she believes, in his impurity, lies her salvation. She must certainly be destroyed, as woman; but only to be raised again from the ashes—new, restored to youth—as a real human being.

So long as there are two sexes there will always be a woman question, just as there will be the problem of mankind. Christ was mindful of this when, according to the account of one of the Fathers of the Church—Clemens—He talked with Salome, without the optimistic palliation of the sex which St. Paul and Luther invented later: death will last so long as women bring forth, and truth will not prevail until the two become one, until from man and woman a third self, neither man nor woman, is evolved.

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Now for the first time, looking at the woman question as the most important problem of mankind, the demand for the sexual abstinence on the part of both sexes is put forward with good reason. To seek to ground this claim on the prejudicial effects on the health following sexual intercourse would be absurd, for any one with knowledge of the physical frame could upset such a theory at all points; to found it on the immorality of passion would also be wrong, because that would introduce a heteronomous motive into ethics. St. Augustine, however, must certainly have been aware, when he advocated chastity for all mankind, that the objection raised to it would be that in such a case the whole human race would quickly disappear from the face of the earth.

This extraordinary apprehension, the worst part of which appears to be the thought that the race would be exterminated, shows not only the greatest unbelief in individual immortality and eternal life for moral well-doers; it is not only most irreligious, but it proves at the same time the cowardice of man and his incapacity to live an individual life. To any one who thinks thus, the earth can only mean the turmoil and press of those on it; death must seem less terrible to such a man than isolation. If the immortal, moral part of his personality were really vigorous, he would have courage to look this result in the face; he would not fear the death of the body, nor attempt to substitute the miserable certainty of the continuation of the race for his lack of faith in the eternal life of the soul. The rejection of sexuality is merely the death of the physical life, to put in its place the full development of the spiritual life.

Hence it follows that it cannot be a moral duty to provide for the continuance of the race. This common argument appears to me to be so extraordinarily false that I am almost ashamed to meet it. Yet at the risk of making myself ridiculous I must ask if any one ever consummated coitus to avoid the great danger of letting the human race die out, if he failed in his duty? And would it not follow that any man who prefers chastity would be open to the charge of immoral conduct? Every form of fecundity is loathsome, and no one who is honest with himself feels bound to provide for the continuity of the human race. And what we do not realise to be a duty, is not a duty.

On the contrary, it is immoral to procreate a human being for any secondary reason, to bring a being into the limitations of humanity, the conditions made for him by his parentage; the fundamental reason why the possible freedom and spontaneity of a human being is limited is that he was begotten in such an immoral fashion. That the human race should persist is of no interest whatever to reason; he who would perpetuate humanity would perpetuate the problem and the guilt, the only problem and the only guilt. The only true goal is divinity and the union of humanity with the Godhead; that is the real choice between good and evil, between existence and negation. The moral sanction that has been invented for coitus, in supposing that there is an ideal attitude to the act in which only the propagation of the race is thought of, is no sufficient defence. There is no such imperative in the mind of man; it is merely an ingenious defence of a desire, and there is the fundamental immorality in it, that the being to be created has no power of choice with regard to his parents. As for the sexual union in which the production of children is prevented, there is no possible justification.

Sexual union has no place in the idea of mankind, not because ascetism is a duty, but because in it woman becomes the object, the cause, and man does what he will with her, looks upon her merely as a “thing,” not as a living human being with an inner, psychic, existence. And so man despises woman the moment coitus is over, and the woman knows that she is despised, even although a few minutes before she thought herself adored.