Otto Weininger (who was jewish) said silly things about women and about jews, in their usual demeanour to concentrate on the wrong things first that is how he is, at large, remembered by the human race – but that is not what is important. What is important is that Otto Weininger was the greatest philosopher of all time. Otto Weininger gave the answer to what is the meaning of life. The meaning of life is to become a good person. A person becomes good when she embraces reason and moral, when she strives for a clear, unaffected understanding as well as for empathy, if not love, for the object. „Logic and ethics … are, all in all, one and the same: duty against oneself. Not only virtue but also understanding, not only sanctity but also wisdom are the duty of man, only both combined establish integrity and perfection.“ The means to achieve perfection are being interested. Being interested is the good principle. When I am interested in the object, or the fellow human, I show my respect. When I try to understand him (which does not mean that I excuse him) I pay my highest tribute to him. The outstanding human being is therefore the most universal and the most interested human being. She, who lives with the world as a whole in the most intimate relationship, who strives to understand it most deeply, and with the highest passion most objectively, will also act most virtuously (something also Nietzsche said once). Relying on Kant, Otto Weininger framed an Individualethik about man who has to establish virtue and understanding by himself, in a universe that is „deeply silent“, but according to the good principle. Like Kant, Otto Weininger felt profoundly shaken by that insight and the distinguished person will understand this insight, respectively the grasp on this insight, as something sublime, like „the bestarred nightsky“. Taking away the obnoxious elements, „Sex and Character“ is one of the greatest and deepest books ever written, by an intellect of such an astonishing supremacy, and the posthumously published essays are further elaborations and illuminations. The title of the second book is „About the Last Things“, rarely a title is so accurate, since the basic thought contains the alpha and the omega of it all. Otto Weininger is the redeemer of the post-religious age. And he may be a primary thinker for an age of post-conventionalist moral systems.

While writing on „Sex and Character“ Otto Weininger, who was only at the beginning of his twenties then, became ever more depressed. He made statements, ever ominous, that the book would contain an important truth – which, however, „will bring death: either to the book, or to his author“. After it was published it was largely ignored. Otto Weininger however became ever more restless and obsessed by the thought that he was „a criminal“. He became philosophically interested in the problem of „the criminal“ as a type of behaviour and of a human being opposed to virtuousness (which is, at least, a more accurate way to model this than to take „the woman“ and „the jew“ as opposites to the (logical and ethical) genius). Along with the usual intensity of the inner life and the overexcitabilities which every once in a while torment the genius person Otto Weininger, during his deep mediation about ethics, became tormented with the (rational) thought that he would most likely not be able to live up to his own philosophical ideals and became sucked in the conception that he would be a „criminal“ at all. It is not known why Otto Weininger became obsessed with this thought. He was a very virtuous person. Maybe he became ashamed by the inherent misanthropy of his antisemitism and his misogyny (which were, however, much less prominent in „About the Last Things“), a woman however, who dated him once, later reported about her impression about him in the wording that she had „met Jesus Christ“ (therefore also a person obsessed by her own (actual or virtual) „sins“). Further complications might have added to the confusion. Someone who knew both Weininger and Franz Kafka said about them: „They were both geniuses. And mad. Genius and mad. They both already crossed out a sentence even before writing it down.“ That is not madness but a mind running at ultra-fast speed and an emanation of the inner life of an ultracomplex person. Note however: such a condition can also be pathological or turn pathological. Otto Weininger was a mind so supreme that he seemed to be above the level of even the great existential philosophers who, themselves, were somehow the greatest, most comphrehensive minds in history. Yet those very great philosophers – Socrates, Plato, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein, also Schopenhauer (and, if they had lived longer, Pascal and probably Georg Büchner) – were actually meta-philosophers (as well as Fariduddin Attar, the greatest of all existential philosophical poets, was a meta-sufi). Having written „Sex and Character“ at the first shot, Otto Weininger seemed to reside even above them, i.e. above the level of a meta-philosopher – but what would that be? Ultra-intelligent people run in danger of climbing on the very top of a discipline in a short time and then don´t know what do to further, or have difficulties to interpret what they are doing since there is no actual comparison possible: Otto Weininger at least developed a (temporary) identity crisis and considered himself as „no philosopher, not at all. But what would I be instead? Probably nothing!“ Also Otto Weininger reached for divineness. He expressed that the genius person will become a god and in his mediatations about ethics he reached into religion. But since Otto Weininger was a rational person with no religious sentiments he probably became plagued by that inconsistency. His synthetic intelligence reached for the heavens but his analytical intelligence further dissolved everything and probably intensified his perception of „chaos“ (which he became afraid of and attributed to the „criminal“). Another important element, probably the most important of all, is that Otto Weininger simply seemed too young and therefore emotionally immature to adequately handle the weight of his philosophical meditations (therefore also his misogyny and antisemitism who seemed to be the epiphany of an immature person). Again, it is not known what tormented Otto Weininger so much that he felt driven into the final consequence. Probably also finding out, respectively feeling confirmed, that his ethics is not acutally applicable to man. Being passionately objectively interested in the world, anti-egoic and empathetic, in an intimate relation to the totality of the world, is the domain of the genius, and beyond the reach of ordinary man. And possibly also out of reach of the genius. The important message of the „system“ of Otto Weininger is the encouragement of man to become genius, that genius is actually an imperative to reach for itself, yet at the same time he was aware that to ultimately successfully follow this imperative will remain the solitary business of few. In an uncanny state of mind, both being highly mentally disturbed as well as being highly mentally present and logical, he went to the death house of Beethoven in the Schwarzspanierstraße in Vienna and shot himself to death, at age 23, on Oct. 4 1903. Immediately thereafter his book became a bestseller and a longseller, altough his fame mostly stemmed out from being seen as an eccentric figure respectively an idol for anti-feminists and antisemites. Good people also saw the good in him and brillant people saw his brillance, but this perception was isolated and did not become systematic or encouraged scholarship. After World War 2 his remembrance sunk into oblivion respectively degenerated into being remembered as an outrageous crank. The importance of his books as a reflection on ethics was obviously never really fully grasped. Freud, who knew Weininger personally a bit, called „Sex and Character“ „ein merkwürdiges Buch“.

This was the life and death of Otto Weininger (1880-1903), probably the most, or at least one of the most pronouced idiosyncracies in the eternal recurrence of man who does not understand very much, who is not interested very much, and who does not care very much (and this is probably the way it should be (to secure his eternal return)).

„The ego of the genius accordingly is simply itself universal comprehension, the centre of infinite space; the great man contains the whole universe within himself; genius is the living microcosm. He is not an intricate mosaic, a chemical combination of an infinite number of elements; the argument in chap. iv. as to his relation to other men and things must not be taken in that sense; he is everything. In him and through him all psychical manifestations cohere and are real experiences, not an elaborate piece-work, a whole put together from parts in the fashion of science. For the genius the ego is the all, lives as the all; the genius sees nature and all existences as whole; the relations of things flash on him intuitively; he has not to build bridges of stones between them.“ – O.W.

„The reason why madness overtakes so many men of genius – fools believe it comes from the influence of Venus, or the spinal degeneration of neurasthenics – is that for many the burden becomes too heavy, the task of bearing the whole world on the shoulders, like Atlas, intolerable for the smaller, but never for the really mighty minds. But the higher a man mounts, the greater may be his fall; all genius is a conquering of chaos, mystery, and darkness, and if it degenerates and goes to pieces, the ruin is greater in proportion to the success. The genius which runs to madness is no longer genius; it has chosen happiness instead of morality. All madness is the outcome of the insupportability of suffering attached to all consciousness.“ – O.W.

UPDATE AUGUST 31, 2018

When I see something beautiful and intelligent (or genius) I usually get very euphoric and my heart melts. Such has also been the case when I got confrontend with Otto Weininger, and I have to admit that I have only scanned the more outrageous parts of „Sex and Character“ (not least because they rely on an antique and outdated natural science). However, since the more outrageous thing is that Otto Weininger today is more or less only remembered as a crank, antifeminist and antisemite, and concerning his much more important messages pratically forgotten, I considered it rightful to concentrate on the latter. However, concerning his melodramatic and symbolic suicide some other thoughts have come to my mind in the meantime. I considered his suicide (somehow) as a consequence of his genius and his strive as an ethical genius that is bound to find out that his message cannot actually be realised, or as a case of an absolute genius that is bound to live in a relative world and decides that it´s not worth it. You can construct the hypothetical case of an absolute genius that will, due to his perfection that also means impairedness in relation to the world, soon end up putting a bullett in the fucking head as he cannot stand such a paradox. And last not least – respectively first and foremost – suicidal states have been quite prominent in myself, especially when writing the Book of Stange and Unproductive Thinking and the internal struggles for the realisation of genius and of ethics – including the insight into its (quasi-) paradoxical limitations had been quite the same for me as they had been for Otto. Otto says, the genius permanently experiences impressions (as his perception is much more intense and empathetic) and due to the so-called overexcitabilities common for gifted people, depressive and suicidal thoughts can come in with a frightening intensity, also involving heavy bodily pain. When I wrote the Book of Strange and Unproductive Thinking, i.e. a completely outlandish thing that operates at the absolute frontiers and exosphere regions of human thought and imagination, I was thinking as if my mind had started digesting itself (as, somehow, it had digested virtually everything before), and I actually often thought that suicide or some kind of self-implosion or annihilation could be imminent. Those were the days, my friend.

However, between depression, artistic/spiritual struggle and entertaining suicidal thoughts and actually carrying out suicide there is a vast difference (and, as I realised later, although my depressive hallucinations were caused by intellectual/creative/spiritual struggle, poverty, isolation, the perspective that it does not pay off, etc. they had been seriously aggravated by alcohol abuse at that time)! In retrospect I can tell you that, yes, it was a hard time, and the inner struggles alongside strange and unproductive thinking are damn real, they are not some hypochondric shit or luxury problems. Working in isolation with the possibility to reach out denied is resemblant to neurosis and „Dichterwahnsinn“. And so the story of Otto Weininger was told, not least by the people who knew him and from whom I gathered my information, as a „neurotic“ story. Yet remember, he killed himself because he began to consider himself a „criminal“ (about to commit a crime, and before doing so he would rather kill himself (in order to protect others from harm (or to protect his own reputation?) – “The virtuous man chooses death/self-annihilation rather than degenerating into evil.”)). One might think, and this is what I somehow have done in the assessment above, that this self-perception as a „criminal“ was a kind of metaphorical condensation of his inner struggles turning delusional. Yet, thinking over it again, I guess it is more appropriate to take it literally, i.e. that Otto Weininger actually became persuaded by the idea that he was about to become a criminal, not for neurotic reasons but for psychotic reasons. Irrespective of his inner struggles, he obviously was about to become mentally ill, insane – and already his „system“ established in „Sex and Character“ has features of a „Wahnsystem“. Consider that mentally ill people do not necessarily appear as frenzy lunatics that need to be put in a straitjacket and that talk incoherent shit all the time; in many cases they might appear as normally functioning in many domains of everyday or intellectual life until „the thing“ happens. Mental illness is tricky and might grow gradually, usually in a person known for being a bit „eccentric“; as some eccentricities grow, it might be noted but not cause worry among his loved ones, and when it finally turns out that these features aren´t harmless but pathological it is usually too late. Maybe also Weininger was not psychotically delusional about his „criminality“, maybe due to his insanity he actually felt criminal impulses he felt would overpower him if he did not stop himself. Consider infamous mass shooter Charles Whitman who infamousely went on a killing spree in 1966. He had been a normal person before but had felt growing murderous impulses which had not been taken very seriously by his environment when he tried to communicate them – until he finally leashed out. After his death, a tumor was found in his brain, obviously confirming his story that he experienced a gradual and sinister transformation of his personality. One is prone to romaticise the suicides of artists like van Gogh, Kurt Cobain or Marilyn Monroe as the tragic consequence of the tortured genius and, like Weininger, they became cultural icons and symbolic personalities, in fact however, they killed themselves not because of the struggle of genius but because they had been mentally ill, with a history of mental illness running in their families. They, likely, were tragically doomed creatures quite irrespective of life circumstances.

That does not invalidate the genius and what he says, or imply the „genius and madness“ duality. Quasi-neurotic struggles of such individuals and the internal struggles of Otto Weininger are for real, and Otto´s quest for ethical perfection was not insane but hypersane. In that respect, he was like a man actually should be. But this does not rule out that such a person can also be/come mentally ill, which then should not be mixed with genius and creativity, but comes irrespective of it. At any rate, there is too little biographical information about Otto Weininger and any diagnosis about him can just be speculative. His suicide remains mysterious, but that suicides are incomprehensible and leave loved ones puzzled and shattered is not an uncommon thing anyway.

UPDATE JULY 2023

To write about Weininger at all today is, in a certain sense, to descend into hell.

Allan Janik

Although my juvenile enthusiasm for Otto Weininger has watered down – a bit, but not much – I am still with Otto when he says that succumbing to logics as well as to ethics is the duty of man, and fulfilling this duty of man is the meaning of life. And when he declaims – Logik und Ethik aber sind im Grunde nur eines und dasselbe – Pflicht gegen sich selbst. Sie feiern ihre Vereinigung im höchsten Werte der Wahrheit, dem dort der irrtum, hier die Lüge gegenübersteht – die Wahrheit selbst aber ist nur eine. Alle Ethik ist nur nach den Gesetzen der Logik möglich, alle Logik ist zugleich ethisches Gesetz. Nicht nur Tugend, sondern auch Einsicht, nicht nur Heiligkeit, sondern auch Weisheit ist Pflicht und Aufgabe des Menschen: erst beide zusammen begründen Vollkommenheit – I still listen in awe. Otto Weininger still remains the holy one who has outlined the transcendental answer to the most important existential question. He remains the holder of THE KEY. Yet I have now studied most of the (meaningful) stuff that is available about him and I have also read Geschlecht und Charakter in its entirety (remember that I had only dived into the „constructive“ parts of Geschlecht und Charakter before and rather superficially scanned the rest of it.) Despite its everlasting grandiosity on the constructive account, and despite the many facetes and complexities of his reasoning (making him, for instance, not only an anti-feminist but also a feminist, and not only an antisemite but also an anti-antisemite, etc.), Geschlecht und Charakter is unsettling, as it contains hundreds of pages of deeply misogynist (and antisemitic) ruminations (the antisemitic ones actually „only“ form a single chapter). It is profoundly evil, obsessive, cranky, and paranoid. If we try to take it lightly and show great understanding we may account it on the richness of Otto Weininger´s intellect and the breathtaking breadth and depth of ideas he was able to eject, like a volcano: Otto´s intelligence simply was amazing and he clearly was one of the absolutely most intelligent persons who ever lived. Yet, like a volcano, he ejects venom, and he is not sorry to do so (I am usually sorry and feel uneasy when I have to say something negative about something). Much more, he is passionate about it. I still guess the high point of his ethics is pure, but it is surrounded by something that is disturbing, triggering the question about how much it is genuinely entangled in a disturbing mess, if not (an unusual form of) the common stark Good and Evil dichotomy you use to have in paranoid systems. Some have considered Weininger´s lofty idealism an aggressive idealism, if not an (unconscious) camouflage for a basic aggression that is quite universal (as it is, essentially, directed against Otto´s own unpleasant personality (features) – which then resulted in the suicide). Otto Weininger has been considered a saint and a Christ-like figure by many – but, upon reflection, the inner life of saints may be quite complicated, and aggressiveness and hatred and a need to get away from themselves may be their basic motivations. To say the least, Otto Weininger and his suicide (finally) remain intransparent. I was thinking in recent years that he might have suffered from a paranoid personality disorder (i.e. a personality disorder that involves heavy aggression towards others that is nevertheless projected into others), but there is (though considerable) not sufficient evidence for such a conclusion. More (or equally) likely, he may have suffered from a schizotypal personality disorder: which often involves psychosis-like delusions within a convoluted eccentricity. Yet both the paranoid as well as the schizotypal personality disorder belong to the same cluster of personality disorders: the cluster A of personality disorders – which borderline schizophrenia. Also, and especially in the case of Otto Weininger, there is the possibility for cross personality disorders, notably within the same cluster. What is striking is Otto Weininger´s obsession for categorising everything and putting everything into a system (resembling the „magical thinking“ of schizotypals and the paranoia of paranoids). Of course, intellectuals use to enjoy categorising things and attributing some abstract meaning to them. Genius is the power to make novel and unusual associations. The genius lives in an interconnected world where everything is meaningful and resonates. But Otto Weininger seems to have taken his categorisations way too literally and serious, becoming paranoid about them, becoming incarcerated in them. It seems his categorisations and systematisations have even been some kind of necessity for him; otherwise he would have been lost. It seems an uncategorised world (and an uncategorised inner world) would have puzzled him to death. Although Otto Weininger appears to have become less obsessed with „the problem“ of „the feminine“ and „the jew“ after the publication of Geschlecht und Charakter, he went on in establishing a universal metaphysics-as-symbolism, resulting in his notorious sketches about the Tierpsychologie, published in Über die letzten Dinge after his death. Again, his animal psychology is abundant in ideas and breathtaking in its capacity for observation (therefore it delighted Wittgenstein). But it is even more obviously odd than the system presented in Geschlecht und Charakter. Most uncannily, it was supposed to be the humble beginning of describing (respectively „discovering“) the entire phenomenal world as a symbolic system (Was das Meer, was das Eisen, was die Ameise, was der Chinese bedeutet, die Idee, die sie repräsentieren, aufzudecken, darauf gehe ich aus.). From his previous idea that the genius (or, on a more basic level, any man) is the „living microcosm“, he bizarrely drew the conclusion that microcosm and macrocosm are identical, and that anything outside of man relates to something inside of man (and so the dog represents „evil“, the horse represents „madness“ – the topics that obviously were closest to him in his final months –  the ass represents stupidity, whereas the monkey is a caricature of the microcosm, etc.). Finally, you get the impression that Otto Weininger was emotionally living pathologically on his own, isolated and detached, that he was living in a bubble – inhabitated by no one but himself. There is solipsism in all of his undertakings. This also accounts for his glorious ethics and his sublime cries about the ethical individual being on his own, alone in the universe – Der Mensch ist allein im Weltall, in ewiger, ungeheurer Einsamkeit. Er hat keinen Zweck außer sich, nichts anderes, wofür er lebt – weit ist er fortgeflogen über Sklave-sein-wollen, Sklave-sein-können, Sklave-sein-müssen: tief unter ihm verschwunden alle menschliche Gesellschaft, versunken die Sozial-Ethik, er ist allein, allein … Das ist das Grauenvoll-Große: es hat weiter keinen Sinn, daß er der Pflicht gehorche. Nichts ist ihm, dem Alleinen, All-Einen übergeordnet … Ja zu sagen zu dieser Einsamkeit, das ist das „Dionysische“ Kantens: das erst ist Sittlichkeit. – Yes, this is Weininger´s significant position within the Individualethik. But ethics is not Individualethik and nothing else. And man is not „alone in the universe“. Of course, we are born and die alone (as they say). But, between these ends, we are living together with others. And ethics, fundamentally, is about how to live with others. Otto Weininger was basically concerned with ethics being about being „true to oneself“, and the like. All his sweet ruminations about ethics are incredibly egocentric and somehow seem to stem out as signals from an otherwise uninhabitated planet („alone in the universe“). His characterisation of love is equally solipsistic and unsettling: through love, a man tries (nothing but) to complete his own self (whereas a woman does not even truly love as she does not have a true self – so much at least for the stringency within his system). In a way, somehow related to this egocentricity that tries to reach ethical higher ground, Otto Weininger´s considerations about relations between the sexes are also deeply ridden with guilt. Although the essence of „W“ (the ideal type of the feminine) is to draw „M“ into complicity in sexuality (therefore debasing M), Weininger eventually is obsessed with the guilt of „M“: as it is M who, via his sexual desire, objectifies and depersonalises W and effectively „robs her of her soul“ (she is, as I was thinking, not even supposed to have in the first place – so much at least for the occasional lack of stringency within Weininger´s system). What is obvious although is that at least „W“(eininger) actually quasi-raped W and deprived her of her soul – solely, if you may, for the sake of establishing a „logical“ opposition and antithesis to the highest point of man: the genius and the saint: this must have plagued him with guilt. Dass ein Mensch irrsinnig wird, ist nur durch eigene Schuld möglich. In a way, despite intellectually diving into this world so deeply and being affected by everything so deeply, Otto Weininger seemed strangely disconnected from the world. But it is also a world plagued by blame, shame, guilt and troubled sexuality. Yet, despite all the writing on the wall, it remains unsatisfactory to truly figure out how they relate to one another and how they form a world (if they even do). Hypochondrie ist abgelenkter Selbsthass und Verfolgungswahn. Yet it still remains an enigma why Otto Weininger shot himself to death. Despite the abundance of written material he left and despite having talked with acquaintances about his despair and suicidal tendencies we do not know and he never clearly revealed what actually troubled him. We know that he began to consider himself a „criminal“, a prospective murderer, who would do something shocking and who would (legitimately) end at the gallows. So that he killed himself „heroically“ to prevent this from happening (Der anständige Mensch geht selbst in den Tod, wenn er fühlt, dass er endgültig böse wird.). Since Otto Weininger supposedly was a harmless, hypersensitive intellectual who could not even hurt a fly, we are prone to find that ridiculous. Although we should not forget about the possibility that Otto Weininger had known himself better and had a more priviledged access into his interior than we do. Remarkably nevertheless was the (apparent) absence of continuous despair in Weininger (Weininger had become suicidal and depressed occasionally before), his complete lack of sentimentality and pity for himself, and his zero regard for his surroundings, including his family, concerning his suicide. His suicide, in a way, appears like a knee-jerk reaction. The ruminations of his final months concern (next to many other topics) the problem of the „criminal“, of the Doppelgänger (i.e. a projection of the suppressed negatives inside oneself), and of the genius as „self-hater“. Yet despite being suggestive, all his ruminations remain inconclusive in regard of the suicide. Also his notorious nearly-final remark – Der Hass gegen die Frau ist immer nur noch nicht überwundener Hass gegen die eigene Sexualität – is both revealing and dubious alike: we do not know what Otto Weininger actually meant by it. What is striking is that everything written by Otto Weininger, also his personal remarks and notes and diary entries, remain grossly impersonal. Also in his letters to friends (for instance from his journey to Italy shortly before his demise) he mostly writes about his impressions and how he processes them intellectually. Despite the abundant richness of his intellectual processions of his vivid impressions there seems to be something – supposedly essential – missing (someone who had known Otto Weininger – Rudolf Kassner – was struck by an apparent lack of „personality“ in him: despite his flamboyant genius and refinedness he appeared like a nervous, faceless young businessperson working in a bank or so. Kassner speculated whether this could have been the deeper reason for his suicide). To write about Weininger at all today is, in a certain sense, to descend into hell. What Allan Janik means is Weininger´s system as a symptom of the dark sides of Viennese culture at the turn of the 20th century – including its misogyny, antisemitism, neuroticism, chauvinism, sexual inhibitions, etc. running parallel to its extreme cultivation and legitimate demonstrations of genius and cultural heroism in countless domains. Of course, Otto Weininger was a product of his time. But he also was – the one and only – Otto Weininger. Who carried his own private hell inside him. Possibly because of my passion for heavy metal I like to descent into hell, too. But for me, „descenting into hell“ is an undertaking in irony and a deliberate (mimesis of) strangeness and complexity that expands and adds additional layers to the ordinary perspective. Apart from this, hell and the satanic I mostly consider something silly. It is something humorous. But Otto Weininger more or less lacked humor. Maybe because of this, he was doomed: as he lacked an important capacity to distance himself from stuff that gets to close. It has been noted that Otto Weininger was afraid of „chaos“ and „dissolution“. Hell, as they imagine, is chaos and dissolution, an unintegrated sphere of partial objects, where integration and resolution is doomed to fail. Das Innere des Körpers ist sehr verbrecherisch. Hell is a place of eternal petty struggle. Maybe, in a strange way, Otto Weininger´s psyche lacked heavenly integration, and therefore, suddenly, without pity or reflection, decompensated. Ein Mensch kann innerlich an nichts anderem zugrunde gehen, als an einem Mangel an Religion. Kierkegaard (rather elliptically) remarked that religion (in its inherent absurdity) can only be beared with humor… Finally, Weininger´s terminal ruminations also revolved around vanity a lot. He also deconstructed the ethical self, das intelligible Ich, that served as the base for his Individualethik (derived from the Kantian ethics), as something narcissistic and therefore unethical (and Kant as someone who was „very conceited“). He wanted to have it abandoned and enthrone the pure idea of the good as the highest echelon. Das „intelligible Ich“ ist aber nur Eitelkeit, d.h. Knüpfung des Wertes an die Person, Setzung des Realen als nicht real; es ist zugleich identisch mit dem Zeitproblem: denn das Zeitliche ist eitel. Es gibt kein Ich, es gibt keine Seele, von höchster, vollkommener Realität ist allein das Gute, welches alle Einzelinhalte in sich schließt. I find it good that I have sensed this all along and jumpstarted to this conclusion right from the beginning. This seems to have saved me. It is not easy to judge Otto Weininger. Why should he throw his life away? Maybe his suicide actually was the work of a saint – or of someone trying to achieve sanctity. Maybe it came out of frustrated vanity, from seeing oneself unable to reach the absolute. Obviously Otto Weininger clearly was desperate and ashamed of himself. Maybe there was also vanity at least going along with the final act and the theatricality of it. Das Problem der Individualität ist das Problem der Eitelkeit. Dass es viele Seelen gibt, ist Folge der Eitelkeit. Der Verbrecher ist eitel, denn er hat den Wunsch zur Einzigartigkeit. Man braucht den Zuschauer, das Theater, die Pose. Darum entsteht der zweite Mensch. Darum ist der Verbrecher homosexuell.

I will visit you on the graveyard in Matzleinsdorf again somewhere these days, man.

ADDENDUM AUGUST 2023

I still think that if you want to establish universal perspective on existence, Otto Weininger (in the constructive aspects of his work) is champion and shows and guides you to how this is going to get. Otto Weininger´s perspective is more universal than e.g. the perspectives of Kierkegaard or Heidegger (not to speak of Nietzsche who seems to get lost in petty struggles, in relation to that). Yet Weininger´s system, and the emotionality behind it, seems way too rigid and inflexible, therefore it is doomed. It is likely wrong to think of the universal as something rigid. You should rather think of it as something flexible. Whereas mathematics and natural science based on mathematics thinks of the all in terms of quantative relationships, the philosopher and the ethicist (and, most specifically, Otto Weininger) thinks of the all in terms of qualities and tries to determine the qualities of existence (respectively existence as a quality phenomenon). Therein, Otto Weininger, in platonic tradition, thinks of these qualities as sharply seperated and in terms of polar oppositions. Yet qualities are not like that. Qualities are fluid, relational, with unclear contours, usually a quality (like „truth“) is a designator for phenomena that are rather loosely connected via Wittgensteinian family resemblances instead of being territory with precise frontiers. I guess if you want to be the living microcosm and embody the absolute you should have a very fluid personality and versatility of the soul. The absolute, the all, the complete, necessarily contains aporias and paradoxes, stuff that does not „add up“. This is a necessary byproduct. It is inherent. That derives from the incompleteness theorem (inside such a structure a search for „truth“ and ultimate confirmation is – ultimately – elusive; and as shows an amplification of the incompleteness theorem by Gödel´s friend and rival Tarski, „truth“ cannot ultimately and adequately defined within a formal system: hence you need to inadequately define it by approaching it via permanent dynamic procession and via family resemblances, via the koan, via meta-rationality and meta-emotionality and the like etc. – actually the incompleteness theorem does not impair most of mathematics; mathematics still remains practical and operational despite or maybe because of it … and, above all, the „meaning“ of the incompleteness theorem is, like the „meaning“ of quantum mechanics, still not understood at all). The all is something that is, in its internal structure, in its texture, loose and somehow incoherent, ruptured. The world is only from quite an abstract viewpoint „one“. Or from a very concrete emotional viewpoint. But this viewpoint needs to be some kind of universal sympathy. Or love. But Otto Weininger hated too many things. Otto Weininger´s idealism was, as they noted, an aggressive idealism. Within this rigidity inside an aggressive system, failure seems quasi imminent. Within Otto Weininger´s philosophy his suicide seems quasi imminent. Yet not because it deals with the highest and the last things, with eschatology, but because of the emotional way it does. There is a casual notion (for instance often entertained by Thomas Bernhard) that eschatology is a lethal domain, that occupation with the highest and the last things needs to lead into implosion and failure. But it is not. I survived it (so far), and I can tell you there is everything to gain from it. Man, I would have liked to know Otto Weininger and talked with him (although I do not think that this could have saved him). This is not possible in a direct way, but I find it „demonic“ that the physical remains of this singular intellect in space and time lie buried only some kilometers away from me.