社会的進歩の根源
このことは疑いもなく常にある程度真理であり続けたが、現在ではかつてよりもよりいっそう真理である。人類は,科学および科学技術によって,現在悪と一体化しているが、いまだ善とは一体化していない。人類は,世界的規模での相互破壊の技術を学んできたが、いっそう望ましい世界的規模での協力の技術は学んでこなかった。このいっそう望ましい技術を学ぶことができなかったのは、感情面(情緒面)における限界(弱み)や、同情(思いやり)を自分の集団に制限し、他の集団に対しては憎悪や恐怖にふけっていることに,その根源があるのである。 |
Roots of Social ProgressEthics, like science, should be general and should be emancipated, as far as this is humanly possible, from tyranny of the here and now. There is a simple rule by which ethical maxims can be tested, and it is this: "No ethical maxim must contain a proper name." I mean by a proper name any designation of a particular part of space-time; not only the names of individual people but also the names of regions, countries, and historical periods. And when I say that ethical maxims should have this character I am suggesting something more than a cold intellectual assent, for, so long as that is all, a maxim may have very little influence on conduct. I mean something more active, something in the nature of actual desire or impulse, something which has its root in sympathetic imagination. It is from feelings of this generalized sort that most social progress has sprung and must still spring. If your hopes and wishes are confined to yourself, or your family, or your nation, or your class, or the adherents of your creed, you will find that all your affections and all your kindly feelings are paralleled by dislikes and hostile sentiments. From such a duality in men's feelings spring almost all the major evils in human life--cruelties, oppressions, persecutions, and wars. If our world is to escape the disasters which threaten it men must learn to be less circumscribed in their sympathies.This has no doubt always been true in a measure but it is more true now than it ever was before. Mankind, owing to science and scientific technique, are unified for evil but are not yet unified for good. They have learned the technique of world-wide mutual destruction but not the more desirable technique of world-wide co-operation. The failure to learn this more desirable technique has its source in emotional limitations, in the confining of sympathy to one's own group, and in indulgence in hatred and fear toward other groups. |