The publication of this book is
somewhat surprising, albeit welcome. 
Otto Weininger (1880-1903) wrote two books
that were considered important in his day but that have not been available in
decent English translations for a long time. 
His Sex and Character is due out next year from Indiana
University Press and his On Last Things was only published in English in
2001 by the Edwin Mellen Press. Interest
in Weininger, that is to say, has been limited.  Presumably the reason why Cambridge
is publishing this book is because of the connection with Ludwig Wittgenstein,
who admired Weininger greatly. 

We know this mostly, as essay after essay in this collection
reminds us, because Wittgenstein once wrote a list of ten people who had
influenced his thinking that included Weininger’s
name. It was not one of the original
four names, however, and precious little has been written about the influence
that even some of them had on Wittgenstein’s thought.  Of those four, Oswald Spengler
comes most immediately to mind, and nobody knows what influence Piero Sraffa had on Wittgenstein
through their conversations, which were not recorded.  So why Weininger?  Presumably because he seems
such an odd person for Wittgenstein to have admired.

Weininger
committed suicide, the act that Wittgenstein regarded as the elementary
sin. His writings appear to be full of
anti-Semitism and are widely regarded as deeply misogynistic.  Wittgenstein has been regarded as
anti-Semitic and misogynistic too, but it is not his prejudices that interest
us. Indeed, it would be simplistic to
think that Wittgenstein’s admiration for Weininger
amounted to anything as straightforward as agreeing with his views.  After all, he once told G. E. Moore that it
was Weininger’s "enormous mistake which is
great" in Sex and Character. 
If only the logical sign for negation were added to the book,
Wittgenstein went on, it would say "an important truth" [p. 2].  So what is this truth?  Nobody seems to know.

There are only four distinct,
explicit references to Weininger in the Wittgenstein Nachlass and none sheds
much light on the nature of his influence. 
On some points he certainly disagreed. 
"How wrong he was, my God he was wrong," [p. 33] he reportedly
told Maurice Drury concerning Weininger’s opinion
that femininity was the source of evil. 
This view is central to Weininger’s alleged
misogyny and anti-Semistism, so Wittgenstein seems
clearly to have rejected the ideas with which Weininger
is today most associated.        

The question then remains of what
Wittgenstein might have admired in Weininger’s work.
Joachim Schulte points out in his excellent contribution to this collection
that Weininger revels in irony and paradox.  This is why it is dangerous to say more than
that he seems to be anti-Semitic and misogynistic.  He might have meant something else
entirely.

The contributors to this volume
therefore have their work cut out, but they make some good stabs at it.  Béla Szabados discusses Weininger’s
belief that insight and wisdom are duties as much as virtue is.  He points out also that Weininger
used ideal types heuristically only and denied that anything but intermediate
stages between absolute males and females was to be found among real human
beings. Paradoxically then Weininger can be regarded, and perhaps was by Wittgenstein,
as both an arch-essentialist and as an anti-essentialist.  Steven Burns discusses Weininger’s
connection of ethics, logic, and solipsism, ideas that Wittgenstein too seemed
to connect, especially in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.

Schulte gives real insight into the
nature of Weininger’s work, but sees anything like a
full explanation of it as something to save for another occasion.  He does point out that Wittgenstein’s list of
influences on his thinking appears to name only those who had a specific
influence, suggesting that the kind of general family resemblances noted by the
first three contributors to the book (Szabados, Allan
Janik, and Burns) might be somewhat irrelevant.  His own rather tentative conclusion is that
Wittgenstein’s remarks at 6.4312 and 6.5 in the Tractatus might be allusions to passages in On
Last Things.

Daniel Steuer and David
Stern present Weininger as having a negative
influence, by articulating neatly ideas about which Wittgenstein thought the
exact opposite. Steuer
examines the ways in which Wittgenstein might have agreed and yet disagreed
with Weininger on questions of ethics and logic, or
philosophy of spirit. Stern draws
parallels between various remarks Weininger and
Wittgenstein made about animals, ultimately contrasting the former’s
anthropocentrism with the latter’s more subtle perspective.

Rather than any clear conclusion
about the nature of Weininger’s influence on
Wittgenstein, though, the main thing one takes away from this book is a desire
to read Weininger’s work for oneself, if only for its
own peculiar sake.

©
2004 Duncan Richter              

Duncan Richter is an Associate
Professor at the Virginia Military Institute in the Department of Psychology
and Philosophy.  He is the author of Ethics
After Anscombe: Post
"Modern Moral Philosophy"  (Kluwer,
2000) and several papers on ethics and Wittgenstein.

Categories: Philosophical