Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Reading Wittgenstein (on) Reading: An Introduction
- 1 Eggshells or Nourishing Yolk? A Portrait of Wittgenstein as a Weiningerian
- 2 Weininger and the Two Wittgensteins
- 3 Sex and Solipsism: Weininger's On Last Things
- 4 Wittgenstein and Weininger: Time, Life, World
- 5 Uncanny Differences: Wittgenstein and Weininger as Doppelgänger
- 6 Weininger and Wittgenstein on “Animal Psychology”
- References
6 - Weininger and Wittgenstein on “Animal Psychology”
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 December 2009
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Reading Wittgenstein (on) Reading: An Introduction
- 1 Eggshells or Nourishing Yolk? A Portrait of Wittgenstein as a Weiningerian
- 2 Weininger and the Two Wittgensteins
- 3 Sex and Solipsism: Weininger's On Last Things
- 4 Wittgenstein and Weininger: Time, Life, World
- 5 Uncanny Differences: Wittgenstein and Weininger as Doppelgänger
- 6 Weininger and Wittgenstein on “Animal Psychology”
- References
Summary
Introduction
In November 1916, when Wittgenstein was serving in the Austro-Hungarian army, his oldest sister, Hermine, wrote to him that “I have taken your Weininger with me and am very happy with this book; it replaces you for me, a little.” It is not clear which Weininger book Hermine was referring to, but in another letter to her brother, written in 1931, she playfully refers to On Last Things: “I believe Weininger maintained that milk is the only innocent food, because it destroys no seed …” The passage in question is part of the collection of aphorisms that makes up the second chapter of that book:
The vegetarians are just as wrong as their opponents. Anyone who does not wish to contribute to the killing of living things may only drink milk, for anyone who eats fruit or eggs still kills embryos. That is perhaps why milk is the healthiest food, because it is the most ethical.
At first sight, one might take the point of Weininger's aphorism to be to make fun of those whose logical consistency drives them to take up positions that cannot, in practice, be maintained. However, his rejection of both sides in this dispute closely parallels his own substantive ethical outlook, which also sets an impossibly high standard by which to judge human action. For Weininger maintains that to live a virtuous life one must not only rejectimmorality but also conventional mores, devoting oneself wholeheartedly to a life of celibacy and extreme self-denial.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Wittgenstein Reads Weininger , pp. 169 - 197Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004
References
Abrahamsen, David (1946). The Mind and Death of a Genius. New York: Columbia University Press
Foucault, Michel (1972). The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language. Translated by A. M. Sheridan Smith. New York: Pantheon Books
Foucault, Michel (1973). The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Vintage Books
Freud, Sigmund (1977). Case Histories I: “Dora” and “Little Hans.” Translated by Alix Strachey and James Strachey. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin
(1995). “Wittgenstein and the Diversity of Animals.” The Monist 78 (4): 534–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garver, Newton (1994). This Complicated Form of Life: Essays on Wittgenstein. Chicago: Open Court
Gilman, Sander (1995). “Otto Weininger and Sigmund Freud: Race and Gender in the Shaping of Psychoanalysis.” In Nancy A. Harrowitz and Barbara Hyams, eds., Jews and Gender: Responses to Otto Weininger. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 103–20
Glendinning, Simon (1998). On Being With Others: Heidegger – Derrida – Wittgenstein. London: Routledge
Hacker, P. M. S. (1993a). Wittgenstein: Meaning and Mind. Part I – Essays. Oxford: Blackwell
Hacker, P. M. S. (1993b). Wittgenstein: Meaning and Mind. Part II – Exegesis. Oxford: Blackwell
Haller, Rudolf (1988). “What Do Wittgenstein and Weininger Have in Common?” In Haller, Questions on Wittgenstein. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 90–9
Harrowitz, Nancy A., and Barbara Hyams, eds. (1995). Jews and Gender: Responses to Otto Weininger. Philadelphia: Temple University Press
Hyams, Barbara, and Nancy A. Harrowitz (1995). “A Critical Introduction to the History of Weininger Reception.” In Harrowitz and Hyams (1995), 3–20
Janik, Allan (1981). “Therapeutic Nihilism: How not to write about Otto Weininger.” In Barry Smith, ed. Structure and Gestalt: Philosophy and Literature in Austria-Hungary and her Successor States. Amsterdam: John Benjamins B. V., 263–92CrossRef
Janik, Allan (1985). Essays on Wittgenstein and Weininger. Amsterdam: Rodopi
Janik, Allan (1995). “How Did Weininger Influence Wittgenstein?” In Harrowitz and Hyams (1995) 61–72
Janik, Allan (2001). Wittgenstein's Vienna Revisited. New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers
Janik, Allan (2002). “From Logic to Animality or How Wittgenstein Used Otto Weininger.” Nomadas 4. http://www.ucm.es/info/eurotheo/nomadas/n4-ajanik1.htm
Janik, Allan and Stephen Toulmin (1973). Wittgenstein's Vienna. New York: Simon & Schuster. 1996, revised second edition, Chicago: Ivan Dee
Le Rider, Jacques (1993). Modernity and Crises of Identity: Culture and Society in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna. Translated by Rosemary Morris. First published in French in 1990. New York: Continuum
Lichtenberg, Georg Christoph (1778). Über Physiognomik; wider die Physiognomen [On Physiognomy: Against the Physiognomists]. Second edition. Göttingen: Dieterich. Reprinted in volume IV of the 1844 edition of Lichtenberg's Collected Works
Lichtenberg, Georg Christoph (1908). Aphorismen, vol. 4. Edited by Albert Leitzmann. Berlin: Deutsche Literaturdenkmale des 18. Und 19. Jahrhunderts, #140. Reprinted by Kraus Reprint, Nendeln, Lichtenstein, 1968
Lichtenberg, Georg Christoph (1990). Aphorisms. Translated by R. J. Hollingdale. London: Penguin
Lichtenberg, Georg Christoph (2000). The Waste Books. Translated by R. J. Hollingdale. New York: New York Review Books. Reprint, in a new edition, of Lichtenberg 1990
McDowell, John (1994). Mind and World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
McGuinness, Brian (1988). Wittgenstein: A Life. Young Ludwig (1889–1921). London: Duckworth
McGuinness, Brian (2001). “Wittgenstein and the Idea of Jewishness.” In James Klagge, ed., Wittgenstein: Biography and Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 221–36. Reprinted as “The Idea of Jewishness,” in McGuinness 2002CrossRef
McGuinness, Brian (2002). Approaches to Wittgenstein: Collected Papers. London: Routledge
McGuinness, Brian, Maria Concetta Ascher, and Otto Pfersmann, eds. (1996). Wittgenstein Familienbriefe [Wittgenstein Family Letters]. Vienna: Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky
Mulligan, Kevin (1981). “Philosophy, Animality and Justice: Kleist, Kafka, Weininger and Wittgenstein.” In Barry Smith, ed., Structure and Gestalt: Philosophy and Literature in Austria-Hungary and her Successor States. Amsterdam: John Benjamins B. V., 293–311CrossRef
Sass, Louis (1994). Madness and Modernism: Insanity in the Light of Modern Art, Literature and Thought. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. First published by Basic Books, 1992
Schopenhauer, Arthur (1966). The World as Will and Representation. New York: Dover. Translation of Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, by E. F. J. Payne
Schulte, Joachim (2004). “Primitive Language-Games.” In Erich Ammereller and Engen Fischer, eds., Wittgenstein at Work: Method in the Philosophical Investigations. London: Routledge
Smith, Barry, ed. (1981). Structure and Gestalt: Philosophy and Literature in Austria-Hungary and her successor states. Amsterdam: John Benjamins B. VCrossRef
Spengler, Otto (1939). The Decline of the West. Translated by C. F. Atkinson. New York: Knopf
Stern, J. P. (1959). Lichtenberg: A Doctrine of Scattered Occasions. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press
Stern, David G. (1995). Wittgenstein on Mind and Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Stern, David G. (2000). “The Significance of Jewishness for Wittgenstein's Philosophy.” Inquiry 43: 383–402. Reprinted in Stanford M. Lyman, ed., Essential Readings on Jewish Identities, Lifestyles and Beliefs: Analyses of the Personal and Social Diversity of Jews by Modern Scholars. New York: Gordian Knot Press, 2003
Stern, David G. (2001). “Was Wittgenstein a Jew?” In James Klagge, ed., Wittgenstein: Biography and Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 237–72CrossRef
Stern, David G. (2004). Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
von Wright, Georg Henrik (1942). “Georg Christoph Lichtenberg als Philosoph.” Theoria 8: 201–17. A revised and abridged version of this article, in English, can be found under “Lichtenberg” in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Paul EdwardsCrossRef
Weininger, Otto (1906). Sex and Character. An anonymous abridged translation that omits footnotes and appendixes. New York: Heinemann. Reprinted in 2003 by Howard Fertig, New York
Weininger, Otto (1919). Taschenbuch und Briefe an einen Freund. Leipzig: E. P. Tal
Weininger, Otto (1980). Geschlecht und Charakter: Eine prinzipielle Untersuchung. Munich: Matthes & Seitz. First published in 1903
Weininger, Otto (1997). Über die letzten Dinge. Munich: Matthes & Seitz. First published in 1904
Weininger, Otto (2001). A Translation of Weininger's Über die letzten Dinge (1904/1907)/ On Last Things. Translated by Steven Burns. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press
Wittgenstein, Ludwig(1922). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Translation on facing pages by C. K. Ogden. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Second edition, 1933
Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1953). Philosophical Investigations. Edited by G. E. M. Anscombe and R. Rhees. Translation on facing pages by G. E. M. Anscombe. Oxford: Blackwell
Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1958/1964). The Blue and Brown Books. Edited by Rush Rhees. Oxford: Basil Blackwell
Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1961) Notebooks, 1914–1916. Edited by G. H. von Wright and G. E. M. Anscombe. Translation on facing pages by G. E. M. Anscombe. Second edition, 1979
Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1967). Zettel. Edited by G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright. Translation on facing pages by G. E. M. Anscombe. Oxford: Blackwell. Second edition, 1981
Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1969). On Certainty. Edited by G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright. Translated by G. E. M. Anscombe and D. Paul, Oxford: Blackwell
Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1969). Philosophical Grammar. First published as Philosophische Grammatik, German text only, edited by Rush Rhees, Oxford: Blackwell. English translation by A. Kenny, 1974, Oxford: Blackwell
Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1980). Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, Volume I. Edited by G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright. Translated by C. G. Luckhardt and M. A. E. Aue. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1980). Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, Volume II. Edited by G. H. von Wright and H. Nyman. Translated by C. G. Luckhardt and M. A. E. Aue. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1980/1998). Culture and Value. First published in 1977 as Vermischte Bemerkungen, German text only, edited by G. H. von Wright and Heikki Nyman, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Amended second edition, with translation by P. Winch, 1980, Oxford: Blackwell. Revised second edition with new translation by P. Winch, 1998, Oxford: Blackwell. Translations are taken from the 1998 edition
Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1982). Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology, Volume I: Preliminary studies for part II of the “Philosophical investigations.” Edited by G. H. von Wright and H. Nyman. Translation by C. G. Luckhardt and M. A. E. Aue. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Wittgenstein, Ludwig (2000). Wittgenstein's Nachlass: The Bergen Electronic Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. References are to the von Wright (1982, Wittgenstein, Oxford: Basil Blackwell) numbering system