"The Dog" by Otto Weininger

1 of 4

CLICK HERE FOR THE GERMAN VERSION

The Dog
by Otto Weininger
translated from the German by Kevin Solway & Martin Dudaniec
(based on a translation by S.A.M. Burns)
Copyright Kevin Solway & Martin Dudaniec, 1999

with the artwork of Peter Chevalier

(Paintings displayed in Raab Galerie Berlin, accompanied by Weininger's text)

The eye of the dog

irresistibly evokes the
impression that the dog has
lost something: it speaks of
him (as does the dog's
whole bearing) of a certain
mysterious relationship to
the past. What it has lost is
the I, self worth, freedom.
The dog has a
remarkably deep
connection to death.
Months before the dog
became problematic for me,
I was sitting at about five
o'clock one afternoon in a
room of the hotel where I
was staying, and reflecting
on various things. Suddenly
I heard a dog bark in a most
peculiar and piercing way
that was new to me, and in
the same moment I had the
irresistible feeling that
someone was dying at that
very instant.
Months later, on the
most terrible night of my life, though not ill, I was literally wrestling with death - because
there is for greater men no spiritual death without physical death, since for them life and
death are the possibilities which confront each other most powerfully and intensively. Just as
I was thinking of succumbing, a dog barked three times in just the same way as that time in
Munich. This dog barked the whole night, but those three times were different. I noticed that
at this moment I was biting fast at the bedsheet, like a dying man.
Similar experiences must have been had by other people. In the last strophe of Heine's
most significant and most beautiful poem "The Pilgrimage to Kevlaar", as the Mother of God,

"The Dog" by Otto Weininger

2 of 4

who releases from life, approaches the sick boy, he writes:

"The dogs were baying so loudly"
I do not know if this stroke of Heine is original or drawn from folk legend. If I am not
mistaken, the dog plays a similar role somewhere in Maeterlinck, too.
For a short time before the night in question I several times had the same vision which
Goethe must have had in order to complete "Faust". Sometimes, when I saw a black dog, a
gleam of fire seemed to to accompany him.
However the dog's barking is decisive: the absolute negating expressive action. It
proves that the dog is a symbol of the criminal. Goethe felt this very distinctly, though it
perhaps did not become perfectly clear for him. He has the Devil choose the body of a dog.
While Faust reads aloud from the Gospel, the dog barks ever more fiercely: hatred for
Christ, for the Good and the True.
I am, incidentally, not at all influenced by Goethe. The intensity of those impressions,
emotions and thoughts was so great that I was reminded of "Faust", sought out those
passages, and now for the first time, perhaps as the very first of all, fully understand them.
I now lead further:
The dog behaves as
though he feels his own
worthlessness; he lets
people beat him, to whom
he immediately presses
near again, as the bad
person always does to the
good. This importunity of
the dog, the leaping up on
people, is the functionalism
of the slave. As a matter of
fact, people who seek quick
advantage for themselves,
yet protect themselves
against attack, people
whom one cannot shake off,
have dog's faces and dog's
eyes. This is a great
confirmation of my thought
system which I mention
here for the first time. There
are few people who do not
have one or more animal
faces; and those animals
which they look like, also
resemble them in behavior.
Fear of dogs is a problem; why is there no fear of the horse or the dove? It is fear of
the criminal. The gleam of fire which follows the black dog (possibly the most vicious) is the
fire, the destruction, the punishment, the fate of those who are evil.
The dog's tail-wagging signifies that he recognizes all other things as more worthy
than himself.

"The Dog" by Otto Weininger

3 of 4

The loyalty of dogs which is so praised, and which allows many to consider the dog a
moral animal, can rightfully be taken only as a symbol of baseness: the slave mentality (there
is no merit in coming back after a beating).
It is interesting whom the dog barks at; it is generally good people whom he barks at,
not base, dog-like characters. I have observed of myself that the less psychic similarity I had
with dogs the more they barked at me. The only curious thing is that it is precisely the
criminal that the watchdog is called upon to guard against.
Rabies is a very interesting phenomenon, perhaps related to epilepsy, in which
humans likewise foam at the mouth. Both are promoted by heat.
If the dog does not wag his tail, but holds it stiff and straight, then there is danger that
he will bite: that is the criminal act. Everything else, the barking also, is only the sign of an
evil nature.
Dogs among characters in literature are "old Ekdal" in Ibsen's The Wild Duck, and the
greatest, Minutte in Knut Hamsun's novel "Mysteries". Many of the so-called "Old Masters"
depict the dog type among human criminals.
That there are yet other criminals is demonstrated by the snake, the pig.
The sniffing of the dog is also very significant. Here indeed lies the incapacity for
apperception. Just like the dog's, the criminal's attention is drawn completely passively to
individual things, without him knowing why he draws near them or comes home to them: he
simply has no freedom left.
That he has altogether foregone choice also finds expression in the randomness of the
dog's breeding with any bitch whatsoever. This indiscriminate mixing is above all eminently
plebeian, and the dog is the plebeian criminal, the slave.
I repeat again: it is blindness to consider the dog an ethical symbol; even R. Wagner
was supposed to have loved a dog (on this point Goethe seems to have looked more deeply).
Darwin explains the dog's tail-wagging as "the diverting of excitement" ("expression of
emotion"). It is of course the expression of the most rank baseness, the most servile devotion,
which is resigned to every kick and only begs for more of everything.

Otto Weininger 1880 to 1903.

Excerpt from "ber die letzten Dinge"
.

"The Dog" by Otto Weininger

4 of 4

Back to Otto Weininger Main Page

ksolway@theabsolute.net