14 h 25 minAudiobook8 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What happens when prejudice claims the authority of science and builds a philosophy around it?
In Sex & Character, Otto Weininger tries to turn a theory of sex into a moral philosophy. His starting claim is that every person mixes male and female elements. From there, he constructs two imagined pure types, M and W, and uses them to judge identity, genius, and ethical life.
First published in 1903, this work grows out of Weininger's doctoral studies in Vienna. Its arguments are openly sexist and antisemitic, and its claims about women and Jews are false and hateful. Read it as a document of its age: a case study in how prejudice takes the shape of theory.
What you’ll discover
- The scheme beneath the claims Trace how Weininger moves from mixed sexual traits to rigid ideals of man and woman.
- Identity reduced to types Examine the gap between his account of real people and his imagined categories.
- Genius as a moral ideal Explore why Weininger places genius and ethics within what he calls the male principle.
- Prejudice presented as philosophy Confront the sexist and antisemitic claims that make this a troubling historical document.
- Vienna and its ideas Encounter a thinker whose work offers a case study in the history of discredited ideas.
Who will love it
For readers who love the history of ideas, are curious about Vienna around 1900, or enjoy exploring the thinkers who argued with this book.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Every person mixes male and female
- Two pure types shape his whole scheme
- He claims women lack a true self
- Genius and ethics belong to the male principle
- Judaism is treated as a mental type
- Why people read it and why it fails
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Geschlecht und Charakter
by Otto Weininger · 1903
Weininger builds a theory of male and female that reveals how prejudice can dress itself as science.
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In short
Sex and Character is a book by Otto Weininger, a young thinker from Vienna. It appeared in 1903 under the German title Geschlecht und Charakter.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
Every person mixes male and female
Weininger begins with biology as it was understood around 1900. Scientists then knew that embryos show traces of both sexes early in development. Weininger takes this and pushes it far beyond the evidence. He claims that no one is wholly male or wholly female, and that each person sits somewhere on a scale between the two.
He supports this with talk of intermediate sexual forms. Some men, he says, have traits we call feminine, and some women have traits we call masculine. He believed the attraction between two people could be described as a kind of sum, in which the male and female shares of each person fit together to make one whole. This is the part of his argument that sounds most modern, and it is the reason some readers have wrongly taken him as a forerunner of later thinking on gender.
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What is Sex and Character about?
It is a 1903 treatise by Otto Weininger that claims everyone mixes male and female traits, and then argues that women and Jews lack the self that he thought was needed for genius and ethics. Its claims are discredited.
Why is Otto Weininger's book so controversial?
It is openly sexist and antisemitic. It denies women a true self and morality, it says emancipation does not express what real women want, and it presents Judaism as a flawed mental type, all without sound evidence.
What do M and W mean in Sex and Character?
M and W are Weininger's pure ideal types, the perfect male and the perfect female. He says no real person is either one, and that everyone sits somewhere between them on a scale.
The author
Otto Weininger
1880–1903 · Austrian philosopher and writer
Otto Weininger was an Austrian philosopher and writer. He was born in Vienna in 1880 and died there in 1903. He studied at the University of Vienna and received his doctorate in 1902. His book Sex and Character was published in 1903. He died by suicide at the age of 23.
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