{"title":"SCHATTEN- UND LICHTSEITEN DER GENIETHEORIE OTTO WEININGERS","authors":"Jacques Le Rider","doi":"10.1111/glal.12346","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div>\n \n <p>Is it possible to separate the wheat from the chaff in Otto Weiningerʼs (in)famous <i>Geschlecht und Charakter</i> and to analyse its theory of genius without taking into consideration the antifeminist and antisemitic context of the work as a whole? This article argues that it is not: Weininger's theory of genius is central to his misogynistic and antisemitic cultural critique. He uses genius as the unassailable subject, ‘the divine in man’, to oppose Ernst Mach's thesis of the ‘unrettbares Ich’ (‘irretrievable self’) that was popularised by Hermann Bahr as a fitting diagnosis of the malaise of modernity.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":54012,"journal":{"name":"GERMAN LIFE AND LETTERS","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2000,"publicationDate":"2022-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"GERMAN LIFE AND LETTERS","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/glal.12346","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LITERATURE, GERMAN, DUTCH, SCANDINAVIAN","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Is it possible to separate the wheat from the chaff in Otto Weiningerʼs (in)famous Geschlecht und Charakter and to analyse its theory of genius without taking into consideration the antifeminist and antisemitic context of the work as a whole? This article argues that it is not: Weininger's theory of genius is central to his misogynistic and antisemitic cultural critique. He uses genius as the unassailable subject, ‘the divine in man’, to oppose Ernst Mach's thesis of the ‘unrettbares Ich’ (‘irretrievable self’) that was popularised by Hermann Bahr as a fitting diagnosis of the malaise of modernity.
期刊介绍:
- German Life and Letters was founded in 1936 by the distinguished British Germanist L.A. Willoughby and the publisher Basil Blackwell. In its first number the journal described its aim as "engagement with German culture in its widest aspects: its history, literature, religion, music, art; with German life in general". German LIfe and Letters has continued over the decades to observe its founding principles of providing an international and interdisciplinary forum for scholarly analysis of German culture past and present. The journal appears four times a year, and a typical number contains around eight articles of between six and eight thousand words each.