バートランド・ラッセル「合理性と幸福」
* 原著：The Conquest of Happiness, by Bertrand Russell, 1930, chap.11
* 出典：『
ラッセル思想辞典』所収
多くの人々の中には
'合理性'を嫌う人もいる。私に言わせると、嫌う人は
'理性の働き'を誤解している。確かに、理性の働きの一部は人間の幸福の妨げとなる。だが、感情を発生させるのは、元来、'理性の仕事'ではない。憎悪とか嫉妬とかを少なくさせる方法を見つけ出すことが、理性的心理の働きの一部である。
'合理性'とは、主として内面的調和から成り立つから、これに到達した人は、内面的闘争に邪魔されている人よりも、この世のことを思索する場合、一層とらわれなくなる。
自己中心、自己集中の病気にかかった人を、理性がこれを治療してくれる。自己分裂の人は興奮を求め、思考する苦痛を避け、離脱法として陶酔を選び、根深い病気への第一歩に踏み込む。
最大の幸福は自分の様々な能力を完全に発揮する心と、精神の活溌な活動にある。陶酔を必要とする幸福は偽せ物である。
(松下注：写真は、B. Russell's The Good Citizen's Alphabet, 1953 より)
There is in many people a dislike of rationality, and where this exists the kind of thing that I have been saying will seem irrelevant and unimportant. There is an idea that rationality, if allowed free play, will kill all the deeper emotions. This belief appears to me to be due to an entirely erroneous conception of the function of reason in human life. It is not the business of reason to generate emotions, though it may be part of its function to discover ways of preventing such emotions as are an obstacle to well-being. To find ways of minimizing hatred and envy is no doubt part of the function of a rational psychology. But it is a mistake to suppose that in minimizing these passions we shall at the same time diminish the strength of those passions which reason does not condemn. In passionate love, in parental affection, in friendship, in benevolence, in devotion to science or art, there is nothing that reason should wish to diminish. The rational man, when he feels any or all of these emotions, will be glad that he feels them and will do nothing to lessen their strength, for all these emotions are parts of the good life, the life, that is, that makes for happiness both in oneself and in others. There is nothing irrational in the passions as such, and many irrational people feel only the most trivial passions. No man need fear that by making himself rational he will make his life dull. On the contrary, since rationality consists in the main of internal harmony, the man who achieves it is freer in his contemplation of the world and in the use of his energies to achieve external purposes than is the man who is perpetually hampered by inward conflicts. Nothing is so dull as to be encased in self, nothing so exhilarating as to have attention and energy directed outwards.
