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Otto Weininger citations
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Otto Weininger, né le 3 avril 1880 à Vienne et mort le 4 octobre 1903 dans la même ville, est un philosophe et écrivain autrichien. En 1903, il publie Geschlecht und Character , livre qui devint populaire après son suicide à l'âge de 23 ans. De nos jours, cet ouvrage est considéré comme sexiste et antisémite et a régulièrement servi depuis de référence à la propagande antisémite. Wikipedia  

✵ 3. avril 1880 – 4. octobre 1903
Otto Weininger photo
Otto Weininger: 41 citations0 J'aime

Otto Weininger: Citations en anglais

“The psychical condition of men’s minds may be compared with a set of bells close together, and so arranged that in the ordinary man a bell rings only when one beside it sounds, and the vibration lasts only a moment. In the genius, when a bell sounds it vibrates so strongly that it sets in action the whole series, and remains in action throughout life. The latter kind of movement often gives rise to extraordinary conditions and absurd impulses, that may last for weeks together and that form the basis of the supposed kinship of genius with insanity.”

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Otto Weininger livre Sex and Character

Source: Sex and Character (1903), pp. 122-123.

“To understand a man is really to be that man.”

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Otto Weininger livre Sex and Character

Source: Sex and Character (1903), p. 105.

“Colour-blindness always extends to the complementary colours. Those who are red blind are also green blind; those who are blind to blue have no consciousness of yellow. This law holds good for all mental phenomena; it is a fundamental condition of consciousness.”

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Otto Weininger livre Sex and Character

Source: Sex and Character (1903), p. 110.

“Man is alone in the world, in tremendous eternal isolation. He has no object outside himself; lives for nothing else; he is far removed from being the slave of his wishes, of his abilities, of his necessities; he stands far above social ethics; he is alone. Thus he becomes one and all.”

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Otto Weininger livre Sex and Character

[Paraphrasing Kant] p. 162.
Sex and Character (1903)

“In men of genius, sterile years precede productive years, these again to be followed by sterility, the barren periods being marked by psychological self-depreciation, by the feeling that they are less than other men; times in which the remembrance of the creative periods is a torment, and when they envy those who go about undisturbed by such penalties. Just as his moments of ecstasy are more poignant, so are the periods of depression of a man of genius more intense than those of other men [Wie seine Ekstasen gewaltiger sind als die der anderen, so sind auch seine Depressionen fürchterlicher]. Every great man has such periods, of longer or shorter duration, times in which he loses self-confidence, … times in which, indeed, he may be sowing the seeds of a future harvest, but which are devoid of the stimulus to production.”

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Otto Weininger

Collected Aphorisms

“No two moments in the life of an individual are exactly alike; there is between the later and the earlier periods only the similarity of the higher and lower parts of a spiral ascent.”

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Otto Weininger livre Sex and Character

Es gibt nicht zwei Momente des individuellen Lebens, die einander ganz gleichen; und es existiert zwischen den späteren und den früheren Perioden nur die Ähnlichkeit der Punkte der höheren mit den homologen der niederen Spiralwindung.
Source: Sex and Character (1903), p. 107.

“In men of genius, sterile years precede productive years, these again to be followed by sterility, the barren periods being marked by psychological self-depreciation, by the feeling that they are less than other men; times in which the remembrance of the creative periods is a torment, and when they envy those who go about undisturbed by such penalties. Just as his moments of ecstasy are more poignant, so are the periods of depression of a man of genius more intense than those of other men.”

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Otto Weininger livre Sex and Character

Denn gerade die starke Periodizität des Genies bringt es mit sich, daß bei ihm immer erst auf sterile Jahre die fruchtbaren und auf sehr produktive Zeiten immer wieder sehr unfruchtbare folgen—Zeiten, in denen er von sich nichts hält, ja von sich psychologisch (nicht logisch) weniger hält als von jedem anderen Menschen: quält ihn doch die Erinnerung an die Schaffensperiode, und vor allem—wie frei sieht er sie, die von solchen Erinnerungen nicht Belästigten, herumgehen! Wie seine Ekstasen gewaltiger sind als die der anderen, so sind auch seine Depressionen fürchterlicher.
Source: Sex and Character (1903), p. 107.

“If man were not free, then he could not conceive of causality at all, and could not form any concept of it. Insight into lawfulness is already freedom from it.”

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Otto Weininger

Collected Aphorisms

“There is, moreover, very little sense in preventing young people from giving expression to their ideas on the pretext that they have less experience than have older persons. There are many who may live a thousand years without encountering experience of any value. It could only be in a society of persons equally gifted that such an idea could have any meaning.”

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Otto Weininger livre Sex and Character

Source: Sex and Character (1903), p. 121.

“Zola, who has so faithfully described the impulse to commit murder, did not himself commit a murder, because there were so many other characters in him. The actual murderer is in the grasp of his own disposition: the author describing the murder is swayed by a whole kingdom of impulses. Zola would know the desire for murder much better than the actual murderer would know it, he would recognise it in himself, if it really came to the surface in him, and he would be prepared for it. In such ways the criminal instincts in great men are intellectualised and turned to artistic purposes as in the case of Zola, or to philosophic purposes as with Kant, but not to actual crime.”

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Otto Weininger livre Sex and Character

Source: Sex and Character (1903), p. 109.

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