Otto Weininger
- Category : Philosopher
- Type : ME
- Profile : 6/2 - Role Model / Hermit
- Definition : Single
- Incarnation Cross : LAX Endeavor 1
Biography
Jewish Austrian philosopher whose single work, "Geschlecht und Charakter" (1903; "Sex and Character"), served as a sourcebook for anti-Semitic propagandists.
Weininger became a Christian the day he received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Vienna (1902). The following year he published his partly scientific, partly philosophical study in which he advanced the thesis that all living things combined varying proportions of masculine and feminine elements.
The masculine element was positive, productive, and moral, while the feminine was negative, unproductive, and amoral. He denounced Judaism as feminine.
Today, Weininger is generally viewed as misogynistic and anti-Semitic but was held to be a great genius by the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein and the writer August Strindberg.
Weininger committed suicide in the house in Vienna where Beethoven had died on 4 October 1903.