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.)
『ヒューマン・ソサエティ』第6章:道徳的義務 n.30 |
Human Society in Ethics and Politics, 1954, chapter 6: Moral obligation, n.30 | ||
今や、以上のやや散漫な議論によって示唆される結論を要約する時である。
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It is now time to sum up the conclusions suggested by the above somewhat discursive discussions. There is a concept of "subjective rightness" which is clear and definite: an act is “subjectively right” if the agent has towards it an emotion of approval, and “subjectively wrong” if he has an emotion of disapproval. But if we say “a man ought to do what, for him, is subjectively right”, we find ourselves committed to intolerable paradoxes. We are thus driven to seek a concept of “objective rightness”, which shall be valid for all men, and shall enable us to arrive at universal moral rules. We may say that there is such a concept, that it is indefinable, and that we have a faculty of ethical intuition enabling us to say that acts of such-and-such kinds are objectively right, while acts of opposite kinds are objectively wrong. If we say this, we cannot be refuted, but we cannot prove that we are right if we have to argue with a man who denies ethical intuition or has intuitions differing from ours. When we examine the causes of what are said to be ethical intuitions, we find that they are to be found mainly in the emotions of praise or blame felt in our social environment, but partly also in our own emotions of love or hate, dominance or submission, and so on. Differences as to moral rules have their source partly in differences as to matters of fact (for instance, as to the possibility of witchcraft), but partly also in emotional differences between different individuals or communities. It seems therefore, that there is no reason to assume such a thing as “moral intuition”, and that when I say that an act is “objectively right” I am really expressing an emotion, though grammatically I seem to be making an assertion. |