Otto Weininger on the character of man

of interest—in being able to relate oneself in some way to a wide a range of characters, experience and things in the world, and as far as possible to identify oneself with the whole—it is in some degree within the reach of everyone.

For Weininger human ethics are directly derived from his view of the logical character of man. Since the essence of man is selfconsciousness, and since self-consciousness is the personal affirmation of the law of identity, duty is essentially duty to oneself. Weininger called this ‘the duty of the empirical ego to the intelligible ego’, meaning by this the duty of the self of everyday experience to the self-conscious identity which is the subject of experience. He affirmed, following Immanuel Kant, that the supreme ethical commandment is to be responsible not to any power or being outside the self-conscious subject, whether it be God or society, but only to oneself. This does not mean that one should always act according to one’s inclinations. The self is a logical identity, and therefore duty to oneself is duty to act by principles which are freely chosen and self-imposed. In effect this means that having made a promise to oneself it is a moral obligation to keep it. The same principle makes inner truth, sincerity and the avoidance of self-deception equally a moral duty, and the highest moral duty known to man.

This identity, however, to which duty is owed is not the empty isolated self about which so many young people nowadays agonise. It is the same identity that lives in every other selfconscious being, from which follows Immanuel Kant’s maximto treat every person as an end and never as a means only. Therefore the observance of promises and the maintenance of inner truth, which one owes to oneself, is owed equally to other self-conscious beings. But it is not owed to them as if imposed by some law outside oneself. It is owed because one’s own selfrespect demands an equal respect for other self-conscious beings. The duty to oneself involves the enhancement of identity and the widening of consciousness to include within oneself as great a diversity as possible of humanity and of human experience and qualities. Responsibility to oneself, if fully understood, is universal human responsibility.

Weininger’s account of the essential character of man, of genius as the fullest development of man’s character, and of the

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