* Peter McGrath(筆)「理性の奴隷-B.ラッセル」
第一章_第一次世界大戦)
しかしこれは,彼の思想の中に,何かよいものがあったといっているわけではない。私は,いま振り返ってみると,彼の思想に何らかの長所があったとは思わない。それらは,世間がすぐに自分の言うことに従わないからといって立腹する'神経質な専制君主気取りの人間'の思想にすぎなかった。他人も(自分と同じように)実在しているということがわかると,彼は彼らを憎悪した。彼は大部分の時を,彼自身の想像の孤独な世界に住んでおり,その世界には彼が望んだ通りにどう猛な亡霊たち(ファントム)が住んでいた。彼は過度に'性'(セックス)を重視したが,それは,性(セックス)においてのみ,この宇宙で彼だけが唯一の人間ではないことを認めざるを得ないという事実に因るものであった。しかし性(セックス)は彼にとってとても苦痛であったので,彼は,性的関係をお互いが相手を破滅させようとする永遠の闘争であると思い描いた。 両大戦間(第一次大戦勃発から第二次大戦終戦まで)の世界は,狂気に魅了された(引きつけられた)。その引力(引きつけたもの)のなかで,ナチズムは,最も著しい表現であった。ロレンスは,ナチズムの狂気の崇拝のための最も適した唱導者(解説者)であった。冷酷かつ非人間的な'正気'のスターリン(統治)のクレムリンが,何らか改善されたものであるかどうか,私は疑問に思っている。(ラッセル注:本書pp.60-61の,私がオットリン宛に送った,ロレンスの事に言及している手紙も参照のこと) |
What at first attracted me to Lawrence was a certain dynamic quality and a habit of challenging assumptions that one is apt to take for granted. I was already accustomed to being accused of undue slavery to reason, and I thought perhaps that he could give me a vivifying dose of unreason. I did in fact acquire a certain stimulus from him, and I think the book that I wrote in spite of his blasts of denunciation was better than it would have been if I had not known him. But this is not to say that there was anything good in his ideas. I do not think in retrospect that they had any merit whatever. They were the ideas of a sensitive would-be despot who got angry with the world because it would not instantly obey. When he realised that other people existed, he hated them. But most of the time he lived in a solitary world of his own imaginings, peopled by phantoms as fierce as he wished them to be. His excessive emphasis on sex was due to the fact that in sex alone he was compelled to admit that he was not the only human being in the universe. But it was so painful that he conceived of sex relations as a perpetual fight in which each is attempting to destroy the other. The world between the wars was attracted to madness. Of this attraction Nazism was the most emphatic expression. Lawrence was a suitable exponent of this cult of insanity. I am not sure whether the cold inhuman sanity of Stalin's Kremlin was any improvement.(See also my letters to Ottoline with reference to Lawrence on pages pp.277-278) |