様々な宇宙像(続き)
哲学が感情に関してなすべきことは、哲学が思考に関してなすべきことと極めてよく類似している。哲学は個人生活から何かを減ずる(引き算する)のではなく、何かを加える(足し算する)べきである。哲学者の知的探求は教育のない人のそれより広範であるように、彼の欲求や興味・関心の範囲も一層広くあるべきである。仏陀は、ただ一人の人が苦しんでいるだけでも(自分は)幸福にはなれないと言ったと伝えられている。これは物事を極端に進めたものであり、文字通りとれば行き過ぎであろう。しかし、それは、私の言っている感情の普遍化を例証している。哲学的な思考法ばかりでなく、哲学的な感じ方を獲得(体得)した人は、自分の経験において何が良く何が悪く思われるかに注目し、自分自身にも他人にも、(前者の)良いもの(善いもの)を確保し、後者(悪いもの)を避けたいと望むであろう。 |
Different Pictures of the UniverseClosely parallel to the development of impersonal thought there is the development of impersonal feeling, which is at least equally important and which ought equally to result from a philosophical outlook. Our desires, like our senses, are primarily self-centered. The egocentric character of our desires interferes with our ethics. In the one case, as in the other, what is to be aimed at is not a complete absence of the animal equipment that is necessary for life but the addition to it of something wider, more general, and less bound up with personal circumstances. We should not admire a parent who had no more affection for his own children than for those of others, but we should admire a man who from love of his own children is led to a general benevolence. We should not admire a man, if such a man there were, who was so indifferent to food as to become undernourished, but we should admire the man who from knowledge of his own need of food is led to a general sympathy with the hungry.What philosophy should do in matters of feeling is very closely analogous to what it should do in matters of thought. It should not subtract from the personal life but should add to it. Just as the philosopher's intellectual survey is wider than that of an uneducated man, so also the scope of his desires and interests should be wider. Buddha is said to have asserted that he could not be happy so long as even one human being was suffering. This is carrying things to an extreme and, if taken literally, would be excessive, but it illustrates that universalizing of feeling of which I am speaking. A man who has acquired a philosophical way of feeling, and not only of thinking, will note what things seem to him good and bad in his own experience, and will wish to secure the former and avoid the latter for others as well as for himself. |