バートランド・ラッセル『ヒューマン・ソサエティ-倫理学から政治学へ』- Human Society in Ethics and Politics, 1954
* 原著:Human Society in Ethics and Politics, 1954* 邦訳書:バートランド・ラッセル(著),勝部真長・長谷川鑛平(共訳)『ヒューマン・ソサエティ-倫理学から政治学へ』(玉川大学出版部,1981年7月刊。268+x pp.)
第1章 n.2 |
Human Society in Ethics and Politics, 1954, chapter 1, n.2 | |||
しかし、感情や欲求が、倫理学上基本的に重要なもの であると認められたとしても、倫理的知識というようなものが果たしてあるかどうかという問題は、依然として残る。 「汝殺すなかれ」は命令法であるが、しかし 「殺人は悪いことだ」は直説法であり、真あるいは偽である何ごとかを述べているように見える。「全ての人が幸福でありますように」は祈願法であるが、「幸福はよいことだ」は、「ソクラテスは死ぬものだ」と文法的には全く同じ形式をもっている。この文法的形式が誤解を招くのか、それともそもそも倫理学に(も)科学と同様に真や偽があるのか? ネロは悪い人間であったと言うなら、ネロはローマの皇帝だったと言いうように、私は情報を与えようとしているのか、それとも「ネロだって? チェッ!」と言った方がよりふさわしいようなことを言おうとしているのか。これは難しい問題であって、単純に答えられるとは私は考えない。 |
That feelings are relevant to ethics is easily seen by considering the hypothesis of a purely material universe, consisting of matter without sentience. Such a universe would be neither good nor bad, and nothing in it would be right or wrong. When, in Genesis, God “saw that it was good” before He had created life, we must suppose that the goodness depended either upon His emotions in contemplating His work, or upon the fitness of the inanimate world as an environment for sentient beings. If the sun were about to collide with another star, and the earth were about to be reduced to gas, we should judge the forthcoming cataclysm to be bad if we considered the existence of the human race good; but a similar cataclysm in a region without life would be merely interesting. Thus ethics is bound up with life, not as a physical process to be studied by the biochemist, but as made up of happiness and sorrow, hope and fear, and the other cognate pairs of opposites that make us prefer one sort of world to another. But when the fundamental ethical importance of feeling and desire has been admitted, it still remains a question whether there is such a thing as ethical knowledge, ''Thou shalt not kill' is imperative, but "murder is wicked'' seems to be indicative, and to state something true or false. "Would that all men were happy" is optative, but "happiness is good" has the same grammatical form as "Socrates is mortal". Is this grammatical form misleading, or is there truth and falsehood in ethics as in science? If I say that Nero was a bad man, am I giving information, as I should be if I said that he was a Roman Emperor, or would what I say be more accurately expressed by the words: "Nero? Oh fie!"? This question is not an easy one, and I do not think that any simple answer is possible. |