ABSTRACT
A careful reading of Weininger’s discussion of women’s emancipation in the context of Vienna 1903 yields a picture that is hardly that of a fanatical misogynist but a particular sort of liberal. In short, Weininger accepted both Nietzsche’s critique of conventional values and his challenge to develop a science of psychology with genuine depth, capable of grasping “life” in its tragic dimension, but, like Jurgen Habermas and Lawrence Kohlberg later, he was convinced that only the Kantian account of rationality, a critical theory, was equal to the task of providing the foundations for a genuinely moral psychology. A crucial aspect of that farce has been the result that Weininger’s work has been discussed on the basis of his assertions rather than on the basis of the arguments and principles upon which they rest in the context of the state of philosophy, science, and society circa 1903 as is necessary for the evaluation of any work in the history of science.
