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face, which is why it is so important to have a beautiful nose, the
“short, turned-up nose mars everything”.(Ibid) We could continue,
because his claims are great fun to peek into, but for our purposes
we do not have to pursue this further. Although we do peek, because
this is what empiricism does: I have to look, I have to experience,
horribile dictu: I have to touch it to know what it is like, to get a
first impression. Let us be honest, this has not changed at all, so
it is no coincidence that the Enlightenment thinkers themselves
use this as a basis.
And of course there are many kinds of alien. The woman who
wants to be emancipated, or someone who follows a different faith
and whose way of dress can already be an irritating factor, the
homosexual, or even those who simply behave differently can all
be alien. In the 19'* and 20" centuries the woman was alien. We
need only think of the “noble” but seriously mentally deficient
Weininger, who considered both women and Jews similarly worth¬
less. Women ruin men and Jews ruin humanity. (see Weininger
1997. XIV. Kapitel )