The Masculine Principle

The Masculine Principle is a philosophical concept that is described in the beginning of Otto Weininger's Sex and Character. Throughout the book, Weininger refers to "The Male Principle" or "The Female Character" in a way that

Click Pic for "Sex and Character"

means "The Absolute Male" or "The Purely Female." In reality however, there is no such thing as a 100% masculine male or a woman that is completely female. What is present instead is an over-riding "principle" that dominates a man or woman's character in varying degrees.

". . . The fact is that males and females are like two substances combined in different proportions, but with either element never wholly missing. We find, so to speak, never either a man or a woman, but only the male condition and the female condition. Any individual is never to be designated merely as a man or a woman, but by a formula showing that it is a composite of male and female characters in different proportions."
-- Otto Weininger, Sex and Character, "Males" and "Females"

For example, the average man is not "purely male," but instead something like 80% male principle and 20% female principle. Therefore this average man is influenced mostly by the male principle, but also to some degree by the female principle. Another man standing next to him might be 60% male principle and 40% female principle, which still makes him dominated by the male principle, but he takes on more female characteristics as well. Females obviously are dominated by the feminine principle in the opposite but corresponding way. Thus, the name of the book - Sex and Character.  

This philosophical concept can be visually observed with the diagram of the Yin and Yang. Men and women are two sides of the same coin, but those sides are not the same. They are starkly distinct from eachother. Also, in each side can be found a dot of the other - but they are still distinct from eachother. The dots aren't an androgynously melded grey area, but rather distinctly represent the characteristic of the opposite side - white or black.  

This manifests itself both physically and psychologically.

In a newborn baby boy, for example, a few drops of milk might secret from his nipples. In fact, the rudimentary biological structure is in place within the male's nipple to secret milk just as in a female's - it's just not as developed in the male's body, but the female element is still present. Conversely, women have facial hair just as men do, except theirs is finer and does not grow in as thickly as a man's. This is the male element present in a female's body. And, when observing that some women have more facial hair than others, we can say that in regard to that specific characteristic, one woman has a greater degree of the masculine element, say 20%, than the woman with less facial hair, who exhibits 10% of the masculine element. In both cases, the women are dominated by their female characteristics, but display characteristics of the other sex to a varying degree. Some men have wider hips than others, but they are still "men," and some women have less developed breasts than others while still being "women."

Click Pic for "Hardwired Differences Between Male and Female Brains...""

In the same way, men and women have different psychological characteristics which form their mental character - and while no-one is fully of the male psychology or the female psychology - when detached and in the concept of an absolute "principle," it becomes much easier to define what is "male" and what is "female."

Thus the title of this book, The Masculine Principle.

The following pages explore what the masculine principle actually is, and of course, how it relates to and compliments the female principle - and vice versa. Why is it that marriage has produced, throughout all of recorded history, a synergy that is a greater force than merely the two opposite parts? Would there be any synergy at all if both halves were androgynously grey?

In the corporate world, mergers and acquisitions are motivated by synergies - they seek to add new companies into the fold that compliment eachother, rather than merely to grow into a larger corporate blob of the same nature. eBay, for example, purchased PayPal several years back not because it was a competitor of theirs, but because they wanted to enhance eBay's performance as a company and speculated this could be accomplished with adding PayPal's unique payment system to eBay's existing structure. Well, that was the idea anyway - not just to "grow" but to create a synergy that made a combination of the two worth more than they would be separately. Both had a role to play - eBay to sell the product, and PayPal to collect the money. What they did not do was buy PayPal and try to turn it into a competitor of theirs. 

A man and a woman can create such a synergy within the family, if they compliment eachother rather than compete with eachother. An example might be how fathers traditionally have been the authority figure in the household - a position that needs clearly defined principles of right and wrong to be established and enforced. The father will generally make it known that his daughter should not come home pregnant, for that would clearly be wrong. The mother, however, by following the female principle, has a more diffuse concept of right and wrong and is motivated by her compassion to forgive her daughter's transgression and help her rather than punish her - to show mercy, as it were. But, it must be noted, one cannot actually show mercy unless it has first been established that the daughter did, in fact, do something wrong. Mercy without the principle of right and wrong is not actually mercy. It needs justice for it to exist as a concept, otherwise it is merely blind emotion and instinct - which is how animals exist in their brutal and harshly uncivilized world.

In this case, the synergy is created by the masculine principle establishing right and wrong, but being made into something mercifully forgiving by the influence of the feminine principle. Together, the two principles combine to create something better than they were separately. The father should not kick the daughter out of the house, but instead ought to show her mercy. On the other hand, the mother should not be so overwhelmed with compassion that she refuses to even acknowledge the daughter did wrong. If it is not first established that a wrong was committed, then what is to stop all of the rest of their daughters from coming home pregnant as well? Together, these principles combine to create a system of justice that is capable of showing mercy, and the offspring of the man and woman will fare much better as they attempt to survive in the world because of it. A synergy has been created because the man's character and woman's character complimented each other rather than entering into competition with each other.     

Click Pic for "The Truth About Misogyny"

Be forewarned, however, that what we are about to explore is not a politically correct topic. This subject is one that exposes many of the falsehoods people like to tell themselves for the lies which they really are. Over the past couple of centuries - and especially in the past few decades - our society has become increasingly influenced by the feminine principle - to the detriment of the masculine principle and the synergies created by its combination with the feminine. One of the effects of this has been the over-riding of the objective truth with the subjective truth.

Truth must be ordered for it to be a functional benefit to humans. America's Founding Fathers borrowed heavily from John Locke's system of ordering, which he derived from the "philosophical position" of God and the Bible - from "The Absolute."
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This, by the way, has nothing to do with whether God is real or not, but rather what God philosophically represents. Buddhism as well acknowledges The Absolute, as do countless other religions and philosophies. In a functional sense they are all interchangeable because philosophically they all represent the same thing thing: Absolute Truth. For the sake of keeping things simple, however, I am going to refer to Christianity and the Bible here, because it is the religion most of us are familiar with, thus making it far easier to use as an example than a religion or philosophy which is more obscure.

In the Bible, when God refers to himself it is usually in the form of a riddle:

"I am who I am."

"I am the beginning and the end/the Alpha and the Omega."

"I am the TRUTH!"

Every riddle God gives in the Bible to his identity is also synonymous with "Absolute Truth."

"God" is Absolute Truth.

Absolute Truth existed before we were here, and it will exist after we are gone. The Absolute Truth just “is” – It is what it is (I am who I am) – the Absolute Truth doesn’t need to explain nor justify, it just IS. The Absolute Truth exists on a different plane than we do, therefore, whether we figure out the true nature of Absolute Truth or not, does not in anyway refute the existence of said Truth. It exists externally from humans, even though elements of it are found within us.
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The ordering of Truth, therefore, with Absolute Truth at the top, is as follows: 
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1 – God’s Law/Absolute Truth

2 – Natural Law/Apparent/Objective Truth

3 – Civil Law/Relative/Subjective Truth
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It works like one of those Russian matryoshka dolls where the one fits inside of the other, in order to contain the wild malleability of the human mind (We can justify anything if we really want to, ie. Relative Truth – Jail is full of self-claimed "innocent" people).

If a Civil Law/Relative Truth contradicts a Natural Law/Apparent Truth, then the Civil Law/Relative Truth is a false one, and so forth. In this way, the “lower truths” are contained by the “higher truths,” and thus we are provided with a philosophical framework that anchors us to reality.
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Now, some things that were true yesterday are no longer true today. Changes to medicine and technology can indeed change what is true. 200 years ago, I would have said it is absolutely true that man does not have the ability to fly, let alone propel himself faster than the speed of sound… but today, the truth is different – the truth evolved. Also, sometimes things we once assumed were true, like the earth being flat, are illustrated to have been false. Thus, we need something “higher” than apparent truth - because we are not omniscient. We can't be 100% rigid in our beliefs in apparent/objective truth after the Absolute Truth has revealed itself to us. Once
we acknowledged the earth was in fact round, we had to adjust our objective thinking to accomodate this newly known fact - it changed our thinking of the sun, moon and stars. Further down the chain of truth, we had to alter the subjective truth and stop believing we would fall off the edge of the earth if we sailed out too far, and therefore, any laws preventing us from doing so were obviously false laws and had to be removed from the books.

This ordering of truth works as a hierarchy and it can't work in reverse. You might be saying, "Well, duh!", but the Soviets illustrated how this can happen by the way they ordered their farmers to plant crops according to a scheduled date on the calendar, rather than to the actual rythym of the seasons. This left their farmers sometimes planting crops into frozen ground. The resulting failed harvests led to starvation for the people. Somehow the bureaucracies in charge convinced themselves that the seasons could be legislated, rather than their legislation having to accomodate the seasons. This happened to them because they un-ordered the truth. 
Absolute Truth is purity. It controls all other truths. It is without fault. It is never wrong. It is enduring, it never changes. It couldn’t give a rip if we understand it or not. It is eternal, and it exists on an entirely different plane than us, and often, our understanding. That we thought the earth was flat had no effect on the physics that ruled the earth and the solar system. On that level, our understanding is irrelevant. Absolute Truth trumps all, no matter what we conjure up in our brains.

I think, after a while of studying this whole malaise we are in as a society, eventually one gets exposed to the changing philosophies of mankind, such as how a change of thinking about fraternity and equality arose out of the French Revolution and this led to a philosophical change in the way society viewed the reality about us. It is often pointed out that this philosophical change is what led to the birth of Marxism and feminism, which are both based upon "the Relative Truth Uber Alles."
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Click Pic for "The Suffragettes versus The Truth"

It is these concepts that will be explored in this book. The Masculine and Feminine Principles and what they are sexually, biologically, and psychologically. How do they interconnect with each other? How do they relate to the structure of our civilization and to the philosophical nature of "The Truth." What is it that separates us from the rest of the animals and makes us human? Could it be the concept of Truth itself?

The following pages will attempt to speak clearly without regard for personal feelings - we are seeking the Truth and trying not to perpetuate falsehoods simply out of politically correct fear. Sometimes the Truth hurts - but it's still neccessary to have it.

Click Pic for "I Stand Alone Today"

There  are certainly anti-feminist sentiments to be found here but make no mistake, this isn't a social justice warrior's treatise trying to foment some men's movement to counter feminism. Movements, like herds and harems, are the domain of the Feminine Principle. It would be anti-thetical to the Masculine Principle to attempt to counter the Feminine Principle by mimicking it - that's where androgyny comes from, a condition I completely abhor and reject. The Masculine Principle must be masculine, and one of its features, which will be discussed later on, is its ability to seek the Truth so we can better understand the structure of the world about us. It's something men have been doing since the beginning of time, and this book will attempt to continue in that ancient, masculine tradition.  
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