" The
next day he wrote: "I should like to go to Bergen on the
Norwegian west coast, where the glaciers and the fjords are,
from there by sea to Hamburg, and then via Magdeburg and
Prague to Vienna.
next day he wrote: "I should like to go to Bergen on the
Norwegian west coast, where the glaciers and the fjords are,
from there by sea to Hamburg, and then via Magdeburg and
Prague to Vienna.
Weininger - 1946 - Mind and Death of a Genius
Needless to say, he was thinking of
himself. And the words he wrote in the summer of 1903, when
he was traveling in Italy, probably voiced feelings that he had
known with equal strength in 1902. He wrote to Gerber:
"There is something wrong with you. . . . I think you are too
much of a gambler. You want too much to be given to you by
providence. You have put too much at stake, and you hope for
too much from the love of women. One needs loneliness more
than escape into the company of others. It is necessary that you
think more of yourself, courageously, always and everywhere"
(Taschenbuch, p. 96).
When we look at his desire for loneliness from the wider
viewpoint as the expression of a way of life, we may see that it
was for him a principle of spiritual activity. The longing for
loneliness dominated Weininger, was for him a vital problem.
He came to believe that loneliness was a means of creating
principles of life though such a doctrine would be repugnant
to normal human beings. Finally the need for solitude grew so
strong in him that it took on a moral color.
It is to be noted that for Weininger the general problem of
loneliness had not only a psychological aspect but also a
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? yo Empty Scene
characterological aspect; it was cultural as well, and even a
philosophical, metaphysical, and religious phenomenon. It
reached into all corners of human mental activities. Just as an
ordinary man may frequently achieve his fulfillment and be-
come truly a man only in the company of others, so an individ-
ual turned toward isolation may become truly himself only in
loneliness. The desire and need for solitude may, and often
does, make the man what he is. To the intellectual loneliness
may be a matter of spiritual life or death. To Weininger it was;
because of his craving for solitude he arrived at the way of life
essential to him and created the permanent mold for his
individuality. Loneliness became for him in the end a "human
right. "
His travels may be seen in a symbolic light; for instance, as a
manifestation of his sexual desires. A quotation from Sex and
Character is of special interest in this regard. He says in the
chapter "Erotics and Aesthetics," after pointing out that Kant
must have had little knowledge of love or sexual desire, "Kant
was so little sexual that he did not even feel the need to travel. "
Even if we consider sexual desire as a possible reason for
his travels,5 we may still look on them as an expression of yearn-
ing to be in a world without barriers. There was in this journey,
as in every other journey, an indefinite longing. Weininger
himself says, "Every journey is caused by an undefined longing,
a metaphysical motive" (U. L. D. , p. 98). For him, then, all
travel resulted from some inexplicable urge, and he was not at
all able to search out the source of his desire. Through his first
travels he acquired an external universality just as he was at the
point of reaching an internal universality.
His journey showed not only his lack of happiness and
introversion, but also an ability to keep his mind open--at least
to a certain degree. Above all, his movement across the world
was clearly related to his strong desire for some sort of balance
and expression.
5 Cf. Hans Bliiher, Die deutsche Vandervogelbewegung ah erotisches Phenome-
non (Jena, 1916-17).
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? Empty Scene 71
He went first to Germany, and then up to Norway, to
Christiania (Oslo), where he studied Norwegian further in
order to read Hamsun in the original language. 6
Through letters and postcards that he sent his friend Gerber
and his sister Rosa we can follow his experiences and his state
of mind. From a little place in southern Germany he wrote a
few lines (July 25, 1902): "Things are not going at all well
with me inwardly. I hope that you, at least, are not doing so
badly" (Taschenbuch, p. 70). From Munich he wrote (July
29): "It is a bit better with me now; at least I pretend it is. . . .
Our parting has thrown a shadow over my path. And you? The
thing for you is: Control your passions, sans phrase. Fate deter-
mines many things, no matter how we struggle" (Taschenbuch,
pp. 70-71).
To his sister he wrote on July 30 a postcard, which has not
been previously published: "Munich. Tuesday night--good.
Now I should not be sloppy! Munich holds nothing for you.
It is boring in the long run. People in general seem just as unin-
teresting here as elsewhere. Novels have already been written
about liquor, but not yet about beer. The girls are generally
quite pretty here--even more so than in Vienna. Have seen
Propylaen today. The poem Gerber wrote is the only beautiful
thing about it. Otto. "
In Nuremberg, as in Munich, he drank beer. From Nurem-
berg he wrote to Gerber his statement about leading "two or
three other lives of which you know nothing. " He went on to
say: "I am in a bad state now, worse than ever before. Not only
unproductive, not only full of confused ideas limping along.
That is only a small part of it; there is far more. Perhaps one
day I shall be able to tell you. "
From Nuremberg he went to Bayreuth. On August 8 he
wrote: "If you had stood outside Wagner's house and read
what he wrote, you would have thought of yourself. [Gerber
was at this time just about to take a decisive examination. ]
Don't think that I do not fully understand your sufferings. It
6 Spire, Quelques juifs, p. 187.
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? j2 Empty Scene
is because I do understand them that I cannot write about
them. . . . To tell the truth, there is something lacking in you
which keeps you from the heights; if you possessed it, then that
fact alone would keep you from thinking so much of your
future, because in the lack lies your unhappiness. There are
people whose lives, in their external and internal conditions,
turn out to be as miserable as yours, but they are still not so
unhappy. What you lack is the religious, or philosophical, or
metaphysical. There is in you a terrible, passionate longing;
you don't know its object and still your demand is insistent.
You are longing for your home, and you do not know that your
home is only in yourself. . . . I write nothing about Bayreuth
and Parsifal. Later on you will understand why. Tomorrow I
am going to Dresden.
"Much to be seen, but I have not much time and I do not
feel like writing about it, therefore no long letter" (Taschen-
buch, pp. 73-74).
On August 10 he sent his sister a post card with a picture of
Wagner and his house. On it he wrote, "Here you see a sacred
place. "
From Bayreuth his route led to Dresden, where he visited
an art exhibition. It was here that the thought first came to him
that he was born to be a musician and had a special musical
imagination. His letter goes on: "I have discovered one who
really knows women, Palma Vecchio. I don't know whether
you have seen his pictures. I am interested in what you think
of Raphael's Madonna" (Taschenbuch, p. 77).
He left Dresden, going north through Germany and on to
Sassnitz. On the train en route to Sassnitz he wrote in short-
hand (August 15, 1902): "That the woman as a rule is
avaricious, mendacious, coquettish, that she springs into action
as soon as she seems to go down in someone's respect, that she
[ will leave alone anyone who courts her naively and admires her
openly--in short that she has all of the prostitute in her--is not
so startling to me as you seem to think. And by this I am less
provoked than by the observation I made shortly before I left
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? Empty Scene 73
that in all these qualities she does not suffer and does not
control herself, that she does not hold herself in check. You
have far too good an opinion of me. I realize that over and over
again. Perhaps the confession I make to you now is also accom-
panied by my accursed vanity. The feeling of not being able to
return love I unfortunately understand. I cannot believe that
of you. I hope that you will understand this first shorthand
note" (Taschenbuch, pp. 78-79).
His journey went on. From a little summer resort by the
Baltic Sea he spoke of the time he still had left to spend abroad.
"In eight days I'll be back in Vienna, where I must stay until
late September, in the house with the thirty-three ugly, un-
married Jewesses" (Taschenbuch, p. 80).
Once more he returned to his mental state: "Your sympathy
for me in my afflictions has been a great comfort to me. The
weather stays bad, inside and out. Since I left--it is four weeks
ago tomorrow--I have not had one good day.
"Did you really think that I should care to know with whom
Miss K. is playing tennis? Am I such a woman? . . . Women
are either motherly hyenas or childish, soi-disant kittens. One
half of them are ugly. . . . Aren't you ashamed of yourself
that you are attracted by that aspect of woman? Nature has
tried to incorporate shamelessness in her" (Taschenbuch,
pp. 80-81).
And the letter continued: "My father sent me 100 Marks at
Bayreuth, and I have returned them. It is unpleasant enough
for me that I shall have to accept his support from time to time
when I return. . . . My journey seems to me to be con-
tradictory. Only in the geographic sense is it straight. But after
Parsifal one should go on a pilgrimage to a far-off land, to the
end of the world, and then be forgotten somewhere. . . . My
journey has also made me realize that I am no philosopher.
Really not! But am I anything else? I doubt it very much. "
These two letters illustrate the darkness of his mood. Partic-
ularly the words, "The weather stays bad inside and out" re-
veal how far he was journeying in despair,
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? 74 Empty Scene
From Sassnitz he went to Copenhagen, and there he wrote
that his father had once more sent him a sum of 100 Marks,
which enabled him to go to Christiania (Oslo). From Fred-
rikshavn he wrote to Gerber (August 21): "I have not been
seasick. But I had not expected it otherwise. I can think of
nothing that hurts your dignity so mortally as being seasick. It
is typical that every woman on board was seasick" (Taschen-
buch, p. 85).
Finally he reached Christiania. On Friday, August 22, he re-
corded: "I arrived here this morning at 5:48. I am looking
forward to everything. Tomorrow I am going to the National
Theater to see Peer Gynt. Today I shall hear Don Juan for the
second time on my trip. The first time was in Munich.
" The
next day he wrote: "I should like to go to Bergen on the
Norwegian west coast, where the glaciers and the fjords are,
from there by sea to Hamburg, and then via Magdeburg and
Prague to Vienna. Please write, in any case, to Christiania. "
On August 25 he sent his sister a postcard with a picture of
Knut Hamsun, whom he did not see in person (Letters XXI,
XXII). On Tuesday, August 26, he wrote from a pine forest
north of Christiania: "In eight days from tomorrow I should be
in Hamburg, and on the following Sunday in Piirkersdorf.
Yesterday I saw Peer Gynt and heard Solveige Song. If the
Vienna performance was poor and the audience disgusting,
this performance was lukewarm and the audience idiotic.
Ibsen must have suffered terribly in these surroundings. 71 have
read a good deal of Norwegian" (Taschenbuch, p. 87).
Otto Weininger was then on the walking trip he made from
Christiania to Bergen in order to learn more of the country.
There is, however, no accurate information concerning that
hike. From Bergen he went to Hamburg and then on to
Leipzig, where he wrote to Gerber (September 5): "I have just
returned from the Institute for 'Experimental' Psychology, the
high school for modern psychologists. " Again on Septem-
T Compare the letter Ibsen wrote to M. Thoreson, saying, "Sometimes it is
impossible for me to see how you are able to stand it there. "
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? Empty Scene 75
ber 23: "Read Peer Gynt on the train for the first time at least,
because of the effect, which I think you will remember for a
long time. Here you will find the pain and despair and practi-
cally all the other forces in and outside man exposed on one
stage. And when you have read it, then you can pass your
examination" (Taschenbuch, p. 88). Thus, Weininger seems
to have ended his journey in an even darker mood. Some inner
explosion was approaching.
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? The ? (/^e of
Fear
V%/hen otto weininger returned to Vienna on Sep-
T tember 27, he learned that Gerber's family had
demanded that Gerber break off relations with him or else leave
home. Otto wrote characteristically: "I don't think it will go
that far. I think it will go no further than the threat. . . . But
if it does, I expect that,to begin with,you will at least come to
live with me and share everything with me. I regard this as a
matter of course. Please write to me soon. Do you need money? "
(Taschenbuch, pp. 88-89. )
It appears from his letters that, to a certain extent, his mind
was open during this trip. Everywhere he made observations.
He formed his opinions instantaneously and was always certain
of his judgment.
This external activity may seem remarkable enough to make
one forget his actual state of mind at the time. He had lost
most of his courage, and his mental condition was exemplified
in his words: "My journey seems to me to be contradictory.
Only in the geographic sense is it straight. " It seems that he
wanted to break his connection with reality on his first journey
and live a "visionary life," a formal existence somewhere in the
distance.
This gloom was in apparent contrast to the external activities
in which he engaged. He traveled, examined the world, visited
museums, went to the theater and to concerts. These excursions
would not seem likely to appeal--so to speak--to his unhappi-
ness. Such busy, extrovert activity gave his actions a certain
tempo, but his unhappiness was not quite hidden beneath his
liveliness. All this occupation may have been a form of diver-
sion which he found necessary to ease his mind. Even if he did
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? Edge of Fear 77
not consciously see that his dashing about had a neutralizing
function, it is obvious that the incessant motion must finally
have had the effect of serving as a kind of occupational
psychotherapy. This conclusion is in full agreement with
Rappaport's statement that Otto Weininger was trying
through introspection to chase away the evil spirit in his mind
(U. L. D. , p. xvii). But eternal activity could not reach--or
rather was not allowed to reach--into that "closed-up house"
of Weininger's life. This being the case, all his busy doings were
of no real significance to him.
It is, at any rate, quite certain that his worry over his own
ideas was so great as to block his natural way of looking at
things. He was so narcissistic that he could not forget himself;
instead, he searched deeper and deeper into his own mind in
order to ascertain his ultimate motives. Self-analysis of this sort
prevented him, as might have been expected, from viewing
things naively and from loving without interference from his
thoughts. And yet what he needed most perhaps was "to love
without reflecting over it," as Lucka said (p. 5).
This kind of introspection, which eventually and necessarily
led to a splitting-up of his emotions into their single elements,
would have made any man unhappy. And, besides, his analysis
caused him by virtue of necessity to apply moral values to his
feelings.
As a new development, an ethical valuation was piercing
through his way of thinking and feeling. When the change
started it is hard to determine. The first hint may possibly
have been in the summer of 1900, when he spoke to his father
about his becoming a Christian. The thesis he wrote in the
summer of 1901 proves that at least up to that time his pre-
occupation with moral values was not so dominant as it later
came to be. It appears that he became more and more engrossed
in his ethical considerations particularly after the fall of 1901.
At that time he spent days and often nights with Swoboda in
endless discussions. Swoboda, who had been away from Vienna
for some time, observed that a change had taken place in Otto
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? 78 Edge of Fear
Weininger's viewpoint. Although he continued to discuss the
psychological problem of man and woman, he seemed more
interested in moral questions, particularly the moral philos-
ophy of Kant (Swoboda, p. 10).
A newspaper article, published a year after Weininger's
death, has now been found. Forgotten in the violent discussion
about him at that time, it sheds some light upon his interest in
moral subjects. The article is called feuilleton: a letter
from otto weininger, and it contains a letter which he
wrote on December 27, 1901, to Professor Jodl concerning his
thesis, which Jodl was going to read for him. The letter is
important because there is in it a sketch of the ethical views
which he was later to bring out in Sex and Character. The
heart of it was: "I believe that my thoughts have become much
clearer, especially in respect to moral problems. If you will
allow me to say so without seeming immodest, I think that in
moral phenomenology (which I think of as a kind of biology of
ideals) it is possible to discern between two different kinds of
ideals--the one group originating in man. . . . There is a
specific masculine morality and there is a specific feminine
morality in ethical dualism, not monism. (Have not all exist-
ing moral systems always been monistic? ) But the division does
not lose its value (for the phenomenology of the types), so
that we really make two demands on every human--fortu-
nately no purely monosexual person exists. From a psycho-
logical point of view it is very interesting to note just how the
purely masculine ideals have been set up by the feminine
philosophers (Spinoza, Kant, Nietzsche) and the more femi-
nine ideals by the masculine thinkers (Christ, Schopenhauer).
Always the same old story: what you don't have yourself be-
comes your ideal. "
This statement is the first proof we have from the hand of
Otto Weininger of his changing view. At a later date he gave
further proof in a treatise that he wrote on a subject related to
his mental change and to his new interest on moral evaluation.
This was his essay "Metaphysics," in which he said that
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? Edge of Fear 79
theoretical, moral considerations made him doubt Kant's con-
ception of psychic phenomena (U. L. D. , p. 114). This view
he had arrived at by the spring of 1902, when the essay was
written.
Further indications of the change in him were his secession
from the Jewish congregation in Vienna in May, 1902, his
essay on Henrik Ibsen in February of the same year, and finally
a letter he wrote to Swoboda some time between the fall of
1901 and the spring of 1902, in which he said, "There are no
problems except moral ones. "
It seems likely that Weininger's moral considerations were
tied up with his peculiar personality make-up. The situation
seems to have been this: while his antinomic traits--his crav-
ings and idealistic thoughts--were the starting point for his
tendencies to preoccupation with moral issues, the lack of
happiness in him at the same time constituted a breeding
ground for those inclinations.
His interest in morality may also have been in part an expres-
sion of the aesthetic aspect of his nature. One might say that
in him the philosophical term ethic corresponds to depressive,
while the term aesthetic corresponds to hypomanic. On this
basis we should say that Otto Weininger was depressed and
was seeing everything in the light of an austere, inexorable, and
punctilious morality. 1
This characteristic we find also in his works. The somber
note is always dominant, as is very apparent in Sex and Char-
acter. Never is there joy, happiness, or spontaneous mirth in his
thoughts. The prevailing tone is always demanding, serious,
bellicose--yet bellicose, not in a jubilant fighting spirit, but
out of a sense of duty.
With this moral coloring of his intellectual and emotional
life, his whole personality acquired a new profile. His convic-
tion reached the stage where he had to live according to his
doctrine. It seems clear that he went so far as to want to prove
the truth of his own opinions, and he set out to carry them into
1See Hjalmar Hellweg, Soren Kierkegaard (Copenhagen, 1933), pp. 167-68.
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? 8o
Edge of Fear
practice. Apparently he did not stop there; whenever he be-
lieved something to be true, he first preached it to himself,
then laid it down as a moral postulate.
It is interesting in this connection to come upon one of the
aphorisms, which was written down in 1903 but undoubtedly
was conceived previously. He wrote: "Ethics may be defined
thus. You must in full consciousness act in such a way that
every moment is filled with your whole self, with your whole
individuality" (U. L. D. , p. 52). We see then that in the
summer of 1901 he was using introspection as a means of
analyzing scientifically his thoughts and emotions, but now--
probably in the spring of 1902--he saw them in a moral light.
The moral view in itself became a new incitement for him to
explore further into himself. Eventually everything acquired
for Weininger a certain symbolic importance. Consciously or
unconsciously, he set introspection to serving ethics, and he
enabled himself to accomplish the great task he had under-
taken, to live according to his own philosophy.
He entered thus upon a life of moral consistency, with grave
consequences to himself. So grave that he finally broke down
under the program. He abided by Ibsen's dictum, "Being a poet
means meeting your own doomsday. " He perhaps did not
recognize the process himself. The opposite extremes in his
personality extended to emotional and intellectual splitting,
and the struggle led to his ethical considerations. These in turn
paved the way for more mental conflicts. In one short year he
had been taken into a new course of life, from which there was
no return. He had become a victim of himself.
A peculiar fear was born in him; a sense of guilt and a con-
viction of sin started to grow, and because of his new ethical
emphasis on emotional life, he developed a sense of duty which
eventually appeared as an obsession. This overdeveloped,
morbid sense of duty later drove him into self-reproach and
self-accusations--a sign of morbid development.
It was characteristic of him that when he was writing Sex
and Character he said, "What I have found here will hurt no-
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? Edge of Fear 81
body so much as myself" (U. L. D. , p. xvi). His attempt to
arrive at a scheme of ethics took him into struggle and unhappi-
ness. He illustrated his own difficulties in the statements:
"Ethical standards are never given to one. . . . Good people
always have a rigid moral code" (U. L. D. , p. xvi). Ideas like
these ran through his mind when he tried to fulfill the heavy
task of living as he taught.
In the summer of 1902 there appeared in him the fear of
being unable to fulfill his moral task.
himself. And the words he wrote in the summer of 1903, when
he was traveling in Italy, probably voiced feelings that he had
known with equal strength in 1902. He wrote to Gerber:
"There is something wrong with you. . . . I think you are too
much of a gambler. You want too much to be given to you by
providence. You have put too much at stake, and you hope for
too much from the love of women. One needs loneliness more
than escape into the company of others. It is necessary that you
think more of yourself, courageously, always and everywhere"
(Taschenbuch, p. 96).
When we look at his desire for loneliness from the wider
viewpoint as the expression of a way of life, we may see that it
was for him a principle of spiritual activity. The longing for
loneliness dominated Weininger, was for him a vital problem.
He came to believe that loneliness was a means of creating
principles of life though such a doctrine would be repugnant
to normal human beings. Finally the need for solitude grew so
strong in him that it took on a moral color.
It is to be noted that for Weininger the general problem of
loneliness had not only a psychological aspect but also a
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? yo Empty Scene
characterological aspect; it was cultural as well, and even a
philosophical, metaphysical, and religious phenomenon. It
reached into all corners of human mental activities. Just as an
ordinary man may frequently achieve his fulfillment and be-
come truly a man only in the company of others, so an individ-
ual turned toward isolation may become truly himself only in
loneliness. The desire and need for solitude may, and often
does, make the man what he is. To the intellectual loneliness
may be a matter of spiritual life or death. To Weininger it was;
because of his craving for solitude he arrived at the way of life
essential to him and created the permanent mold for his
individuality. Loneliness became for him in the end a "human
right. "
His travels may be seen in a symbolic light; for instance, as a
manifestation of his sexual desires. A quotation from Sex and
Character is of special interest in this regard. He says in the
chapter "Erotics and Aesthetics," after pointing out that Kant
must have had little knowledge of love or sexual desire, "Kant
was so little sexual that he did not even feel the need to travel. "
Even if we consider sexual desire as a possible reason for
his travels,5 we may still look on them as an expression of yearn-
ing to be in a world without barriers. There was in this journey,
as in every other journey, an indefinite longing. Weininger
himself says, "Every journey is caused by an undefined longing,
a metaphysical motive" (U. L. D. , p. 98). For him, then, all
travel resulted from some inexplicable urge, and he was not at
all able to search out the source of his desire. Through his first
travels he acquired an external universality just as he was at the
point of reaching an internal universality.
His journey showed not only his lack of happiness and
introversion, but also an ability to keep his mind open--at least
to a certain degree. Above all, his movement across the world
was clearly related to his strong desire for some sort of balance
and expression.
5 Cf. Hans Bliiher, Die deutsche Vandervogelbewegung ah erotisches Phenome-
non (Jena, 1916-17).
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? Empty Scene 71
He went first to Germany, and then up to Norway, to
Christiania (Oslo), where he studied Norwegian further in
order to read Hamsun in the original language. 6
Through letters and postcards that he sent his friend Gerber
and his sister Rosa we can follow his experiences and his state
of mind. From a little place in southern Germany he wrote a
few lines (July 25, 1902): "Things are not going at all well
with me inwardly. I hope that you, at least, are not doing so
badly" (Taschenbuch, p. 70). From Munich he wrote (July
29): "It is a bit better with me now; at least I pretend it is. . . .
Our parting has thrown a shadow over my path. And you? The
thing for you is: Control your passions, sans phrase. Fate deter-
mines many things, no matter how we struggle" (Taschenbuch,
pp. 70-71).
To his sister he wrote on July 30 a postcard, which has not
been previously published: "Munich. Tuesday night--good.
Now I should not be sloppy! Munich holds nothing for you.
It is boring in the long run. People in general seem just as unin-
teresting here as elsewhere. Novels have already been written
about liquor, but not yet about beer. The girls are generally
quite pretty here--even more so than in Vienna. Have seen
Propylaen today. The poem Gerber wrote is the only beautiful
thing about it. Otto. "
In Nuremberg, as in Munich, he drank beer. From Nurem-
berg he wrote to Gerber his statement about leading "two or
three other lives of which you know nothing. " He went on to
say: "I am in a bad state now, worse than ever before. Not only
unproductive, not only full of confused ideas limping along.
That is only a small part of it; there is far more. Perhaps one
day I shall be able to tell you. "
From Nuremberg he went to Bayreuth. On August 8 he
wrote: "If you had stood outside Wagner's house and read
what he wrote, you would have thought of yourself. [Gerber
was at this time just about to take a decisive examination. ]
Don't think that I do not fully understand your sufferings. It
6 Spire, Quelques juifs, p. 187.
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? j2 Empty Scene
is because I do understand them that I cannot write about
them. . . . To tell the truth, there is something lacking in you
which keeps you from the heights; if you possessed it, then that
fact alone would keep you from thinking so much of your
future, because in the lack lies your unhappiness. There are
people whose lives, in their external and internal conditions,
turn out to be as miserable as yours, but they are still not so
unhappy. What you lack is the religious, or philosophical, or
metaphysical. There is in you a terrible, passionate longing;
you don't know its object and still your demand is insistent.
You are longing for your home, and you do not know that your
home is only in yourself. . . . I write nothing about Bayreuth
and Parsifal. Later on you will understand why. Tomorrow I
am going to Dresden.
"Much to be seen, but I have not much time and I do not
feel like writing about it, therefore no long letter" (Taschen-
buch, pp. 73-74).
On August 10 he sent his sister a post card with a picture of
Wagner and his house. On it he wrote, "Here you see a sacred
place. "
From Bayreuth his route led to Dresden, where he visited
an art exhibition. It was here that the thought first came to him
that he was born to be a musician and had a special musical
imagination. His letter goes on: "I have discovered one who
really knows women, Palma Vecchio. I don't know whether
you have seen his pictures. I am interested in what you think
of Raphael's Madonna" (Taschenbuch, p. 77).
He left Dresden, going north through Germany and on to
Sassnitz. On the train en route to Sassnitz he wrote in short-
hand (August 15, 1902): "That the woman as a rule is
avaricious, mendacious, coquettish, that she springs into action
as soon as she seems to go down in someone's respect, that she
[ will leave alone anyone who courts her naively and admires her
openly--in short that she has all of the prostitute in her--is not
so startling to me as you seem to think. And by this I am less
provoked than by the observation I made shortly before I left
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? Empty Scene 73
that in all these qualities she does not suffer and does not
control herself, that she does not hold herself in check. You
have far too good an opinion of me. I realize that over and over
again. Perhaps the confession I make to you now is also accom-
panied by my accursed vanity. The feeling of not being able to
return love I unfortunately understand. I cannot believe that
of you. I hope that you will understand this first shorthand
note" (Taschenbuch, pp. 78-79).
His journey went on. From a little summer resort by the
Baltic Sea he spoke of the time he still had left to spend abroad.
"In eight days I'll be back in Vienna, where I must stay until
late September, in the house with the thirty-three ugly, un-
married Jewesses" (Taschenbuch, p. 80).
Once more he returned to his mental state: "Your sympathy
for me in my afflictions has been a great comfort to me. The
weather stays bad, inside and out. Since I left--it is four weeks
ago tomorrow--I have not had one good day.
"Did you really think that I should care to know with whom
Miss K. is playing tennis? Am I such a woman? . . . Women
are either motherly hyenas or childish, soi-disant kittens. One
half of them are ugly. . . . Aren't you ashamed of yourself
that you are attracted by that aspect of woman? Nature has
tried to incorporate shamelessness in her" (Taschenbuch,
pp. 80-81).
And the letter continued: "My father sent me 100 Marks at
Bayreuth, and I have returned them. It is unpleasant enough
for me that I shall have to accept his support from time to time
when I return. . . . My journey seems to me to be con-
tradictory. Only in the geographic sense is it straight. But after
Parsifal one should go on a pilgrimage to a far-off land, to the
end of the world, and then be forgotten somewhere. . . . My
journey has also made me realize that I am no philosopher.
Really not! But am I anything else? I doubt it very much. "
These two letters illustrate the darkness of his mood. Partic-
ularly the words, "The weather stays bad inside and out" re-
veal how far he was journeying in despair,
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? 74 Empty Scene
From Sassnitz he went to Copenhagen, and there he wrote
that his father had once more sent him a sum of 100 Marks,
which enabled him to go to Christiania (Oslo). From Fred-
rikshavn he wrote to Gerber (August 21): "I have not been
seasick. But I had not expected it otherwise. I can think of
nothing that hurts your dignity so mortally as being seasick. It
is typical that every woman on board was seasick" (Taschen-
buch, p. 85).
Finally he reached Christiania. On Friday, August 22, he re-
corded: "I arrived here this morning at 5:48. I am looking
forward to everything. Tomorrow I am going to the National
Theater to see Peer Gynt. Today I shall hear Don Juan for the
second time on my trip. The first time was in Munich.
" The
next day he wrote: "I should like to go to Bergen on the
Norwegian west coast, where the glaciers and the fjords are,
from there by sea to Hamburg, and then via Magdeburg and
Prague to Vienna. Please write, in any case, to Christiania. "
On August 25 he sent his sister a postcard with a picture of
Knut Hamsun, whom he did not see in person (Letters XXI,
XXII). On Tuesday, August 26, he wrote from a pine forest
north of Christiania: "In eight days from tomorrow I should be
in Hamburg, and on the following Sunday in Piirkersdorf.
Yesterday I saw Peer Gynt and heard Solveige Song. If the
Vienna performance was poor and the audience disgusting,
this performance was lukewarm and the audience idiotic.
Ibsen must have suffered terribly in these surroundings. 71 have
read a good deal of Norwegian" (Taschenbuch, p. 87).
Otto Weininger was then on the walking trip he made from
Christiania to Bergen in order to learn more of the country.
There is, however, no accurate information concerning that
hike. From Bergen he went to Hamburg and then on to
Leipzig, where he wrote to Gerber (September 5): "I have just
returned from the Institute for 'Experimental' Psychology, the
high school for modern psychologists. " Again on Septem-
T Compare the letter Ibsen wrote to M. Thoreson, saying, "Sometimes it is
impossible for me to see how you are able to stand it there. "
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? Empty Scene 75
ber 23: "Read Peer Gynt on the train for the first time at least,
because of the effect, which I think you will remember for a
long time. Here you will find the pain and despair and practi-
cally all the other forces in and outside man exposed on one
stage. And when you have read it, then you can pass your
examination" (Taschenbuch, p. 88). Thus, Weininger seems
to have ended his journey in an even darker mood. Some inner
explosion was approaching.
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? The ? (/^e of
Fear
V%/hen otto weininger returned to Vienna on Sep-
T tember 27, he learned that Gerber's family had
demanded that Gerber break off relations with him or else leave
home. Otto wrote characteristically: "I don't think it will go
that far. I think it will go no further than the threat. . . . But
if it does, I expect that,to begin with,you will at least come to
live with me and share everything with me. I regard this as a
matter of course. Please write to me soon. Do you need money? "
(Taschenbuch, pp. 88-89. )
It appears from his letters that, to a certain extent, his mind
was open during this trip. Everywhere he made observations.
He formed his opinions instantaneously and was always certain
of his judgment.
This external activity may seem remarkable enough to make
one forget his actual state of mind at the time. He had lost
most of his courage, and his mental condition was exemplified
in his words: "My journey seems to me to be contradictory.
Only in the geographic sense is it straight. " It seems that he
wanted to break his connection with reality on his first journey
and live a "visionary life," a formal existence somewhere in the
distance.
This gloom was in apparent contrast to the external activities
in which he engaged. He traveled, examined the world, visited
museums, went to the theater and to concerts. These excursions
would not seem likely to appeal--so to speak--to his unhappi-
ness. Such busy, extrovert activity gave his actions a certain
tempo, but his unhappiness was not quite hidden beneath his
liveliness. All this occupation may have been a form of diver-
sion which he found necessary to ease his mind. Even if he did
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? Edge of Fear 77
not consciously see that his dashing about had a neutralizing
function, it is obvious that the incessant motion must finally
have had the effect of serving as a kind of occupational
psychotherapy. This conclusion is in full agreement with
Rappaport's statement that Otto Weininger was trying
through introspection to chase away the evil spirit in his mind
(U. L. D. , p. xvii). But eternal activity could not reach--or
rather was not allowed to reach--into that "closed-up house"
of Weininger's life. This being the case, all his busy doings were
of no real significance to him.
It is, at any rate, quite certain that his worry over his own
ideas was so great as to block his natural way of looking at
things. He was so narcissistic that he could not forget himself;
instead, he searched deeper and deeper into his own mind in
order to ascertain his ultimate motives. Self-analysis of this sort
prevented him, as might have been expected, from viewing
things naively and from loving without interference from his
thoughts. And yet what he needed most perhaps was "to love
without reflecting over it," as Lucka said (p. 5).
This kind of introspection, which eventually and necessarily
led to a splitting-up of his emotions into their single elements,
would have made any man unhappy. And, besides, his analysis
caused him by virtue of necessity to apply moral values to his
feelings.
As a new development, an ethical valuation was piercing
through his way of thinking and feeling. When the change
started it is hard to determine. The first hint may possibly
have been in the summer of 1900, when he spoke to his father
about his becoming a Christian. The thesis he wrote in the
summer of 1901 proves that at least up to that time his pre-
occupation with moral values was not so dominant as it later
came to be. It appears that he became more and more engrossed
in his ethical considerations particularly after the fall of 1901.
At that time he spent days and often nights with Swoboda in
endless discussions. Swoboda, who had been away from Vienna
for some time, observed that a change had taken place in Otto
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? 78 Edge of Fear
Weininger's viewpoint. Although he continued to discuss the
psychological problem of man and woman, he seemed more
interested in moral questions, particularly the moral philos-
ophy of Kant (Swoboda, p. 10).
A newspaper article, published a year after Weininger's
death, has now been found. Forgotten in the violent discussion
about him at that time, it sheds some light upon his interest in
moral subjects. The article is called feuilleton: a letter
from otto weininger, and it contains a letter which he
wrote on December 27, 1901, to Professor Jodl concerning his
thesis, which Jodl was going to read for him. The letter is
important because there is in it a sketch of the ethical views
which he was later to bring out in Sex and Character. The
heart of it was: "I believe that my thoughts have become much
clearer, especially in respect to moral problems. If you will
allow me to say so without seeming immodest, I think that in
moral phenomenology (which I think of as a kind of biology of
ideals) it is possible to discern between two different kinds of
ideals--the one group originating in man. . . . There is a
specific masculine morality and there is a specific feminine
morality in ethical dualism, not monism. (Have not all exist-
ing moral systems always been monistic? ) But the division does
not lose its value (for the phenomenology of the types), so
that we really make two demands on every human--fortu-
nately no purely monosexual person exists. From a psycho-
logical point of view it is very interesting to note just how the
purely masculine ideals have been set up by the feminine
philosophers (Spinoza, Kant, Nietzsche) and the more femi-
nine ideals by the masculine thinkers (Christ, Schopenhauer).
Always the same old story: what you don't have yourself be-
comes your ideal. "
This statement is the first proof we have from the hand of
Otto Weininger of his changing view. At a later date he gave
further proof in a treatise that he wrote on a subject related to
his mental change and to his new interest on moral evaluation.
This was his essay "Metaphysics," in which he said that
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? Edge of Fear 79
theoretical, moral considerations made him doubt Kant's con-
ception of psychic phenomena (U. L. D. , p. 114). This view
he had arrived at by the spring of 1902, when the essay was
written.
Further indications of the change in him were his secession
from the Jewish congregation in Vienna in May, 1902, his
essay on Henrik Ibsen in February of the same year, and finally
a letter he wrote to Swoboda some time between the fall of
1901 and the spring of 1902, in which he said, "There are no
problems except moral ones. "
It seems likely that Weininger's moral considerations were
tied up with his peculiar personality make-up. The situation
seems to have been this: while his antinomic traits--his crav-
ings and idealistic thoughts--were the starting point for his
tendencies to preoccupation with moral issues, the lack of
happiness in him at the same time constituted a breeding
ground for those inclinations.
His interest in morality may also have been in part an expres-
sion of the aesthetic aspect of his nature. One might say that
in him the philosophical term ethic corresponds to depressive,
while the term aesthetic corresponds to hypomanic. On this
basis we should say that Otto Weininger was depressed and
was seeing everything in the light of an austere, inexorable, and
punctilious morality. 1
This characteristic we find also in his works. The somber
note is always dominant, as is very apparent in Sex and Char-
acter. Never is there joy, happiness, or spontaneous mirth in his
thoughts. The prevailing tone is always demanding, serious,
bellicose--yet bellicose, not in a jubilant fighting spirit, but
out of a sense of duty.
With this moral coloring of his intellectual and emotional
life, his whole personality acquired a new profile. His convic-
tion reached the stage where he had to live according to his
doctrine. It seems clear that he went so far as to want to prove
the truth of his own opinions, and he set out to carry them into
1See Hjalmar Hellweg, Soren Kierkegaard (Copenhagen, 1933), pp. 167-68.
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? 8o
Edge of Fear
practice. Apparently he did not stop there; whenever he be-
lieved something to be true, he first preached it to himself,
then laid it down as a moral postulate.
It is interesting in this connection to come upon one of the
aphorisms, which was written down in 1903 but undoubtedly
was conceived previously. He wrote: "Ethics may be defined
thus. You must in full consciousness act in such a way that
every moment is filled with your whole self, with your whole
individuality" (U. L. D. , p. 52). We see then that in the
summer of 1901 he was using introspection as a means of
analyzing scientifically his thoughts and emotions, but now--
probably in the spring of 1902--he saw them in a moral light.
The moral view in itself became a new incitement for him to
explore further into himself. Eventually everything acquired
for Weininger a certain symbolic importance. Consciously or
unconsciously, he set introspection to serving ethics, and he
enabled himself to accomplish the great task he had under-
taken, to live according to his own philosophy.
He entered thus upon a life of moral consistency, with grave
consequences to himself. So grave that he finally broke down
under the program. He abided by Ibsen's dictum, "Being a poet
means meeting your own doomsday. " He perhaps did not
recognize the process himself. The opposite extremes in his
personality extended to emotional and intellectual splitting,
and the struggle led to his ethical considerations. These in turn
paved the way for more mental conflicts. In one short year he
had been taken into a new course of life, from which there was
no return. He had become a victim of himself.
A peculiar fear was born in him; a sense of guilt and a con-
viction of sin started to grow, and because of his new ethical
emphasis on emotional life, he developed a sense of duty which
eventually appeared as an obsession. This overdeveloped,
morbid sense of duty later drove him into self-reproach and
self-accusations--a sign of morbid development.
It was characteristic of him that when he was writing Sex
and Character he said, "What I have found here will hurt no-
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? Edge of Fear 81
body so much as myself" (U. L. D. , p. xvi). His attempt to
arrive at a scheme of ethics took him into struggle and unhappi-
ness. He illustrated his own difficulties in the statements:
"Ethical standards are never given to one. . . . Good people
always have a rigid moral code" (U. L. D. , p. xvi). Ideas like
these ran through his mind when he tried to fulfill the heavy
task of living as he taught.
In the summer of 1902 there appeared in him the fear of
being unable to fulfill his moral task.
