SOURCE: "The Unknown Weininger: Science, Philosophy, and Cultural Politics in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna," in Central European History, Vol. 29, No. 4, 1996, pp. 453-93.

In the following essay, Sengoopta presents an overview of the scientific, philosophical, and cultural background of late-nineteenth-century Vienna into which Weininger was born.

Otto Weininger (1880-1903) is a notorious figure in European history.¹ A Jewish intellectual of Vienna, Weininger committed suicide at the age of 23 after publishing a single book based on his doctoral dissertation, Geschlecht und Charakter (Sex and Character, 1903).² The work was admired by some of the greatest intellects of our century—Franz Kafka, Ludwig Wittgenstein, James Joyce, Karl Kraus, August Strindberg. More recently, it has attained virtually legendary status among scholars as an exemplary text of European misogyny and antisemitism.³ While Geschlecht und Charakter is certainly unrivaled as a compendium of turn-of-the-century prejudices, stereotypes, and anxieties, it is not simply a deranged thinker's chronicle...