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』8-9 - 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8章:倫理学上の論争 n.9 |
Human Society in Ethics and Politics, 1954, chapter 8: Ethical Controversy , n.8 | |||
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Let us take again the case of slavery. In a community where slaves are numerous, there is a perpetual fear of a servile insurrection, and such insurrections, when they come, are apt to be very terrible. Fear makes slave-owners cruel, and to many among them the cruelty must be distasteful. Sympathy with suffering, especially with physical suffering, is to some extent a natural impulse: children are apt to cry when they hear their brothers or sisters crying. This natural impulse has to be curbed by slave-owners, and when curbed it easily passes into its opposite, producing an impulse to cruelty for its own sake. But impulses of this kind are not unmixed, and their satisfaction does not bring contentment. And the more they are indulged, the more fear is intensified. In such a life there can be no inward peace. Men who accept and practise currently licensed forms of social injustice may despise the tranquillity of the sage and the saint, but they despise it from ignorance. I do not doubt that the many Christian saints who renounced the world and embraced poverty enjoyed more personal happiness than they could have experienced if they had retained their possessions. And certainly Socrates was a happy man down to the very moment of his death. |