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』9-01 - 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9章:倫理的知識は存在するか? n.1 |
Human Society in Ethics and Politics, 1954, chapter 9:Is there Ethical knowledge, n.1 | |||
私たちは今や、これまでの全ての倫理的な議論が行き着くところについに到達した。この問題は、無味乾燥な専門用語で言うこともできるし、感情的に重要な問題を含んでいることを示す言葉で言うこともできる。まずは後者から始めよう。
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We come now at last to the problem to which all our previous ethical discussions have been leading. The question may be put in dry technical language, or in language showing that it involves issues of great emotional importance. Let us begin with the latter. If we say "cruelty is wrong", or "you ought to love your neighbour as yourself", are we saying something which has impersonal truth or falsehood, or are we merely expressing our own preferences.? If we say "pleasure is good and pain is bad", are we making a statement, or are we merely expressing an emotion which would be more correctly expressed in a different grammatical form, say "Hurrah for pleasure, and away dull care"? When men dispute or go to war about a political issue, is there any sense in which one side is more in the right than the other, or is there merely a trial of strength? What is meant, if anything, by saying that a world in which human beings are happy is better than one in which they are unhappy? I, for one, find it intolerable to suppose that when I say "cruelty is bad" I am merely saying "I dislike cruelty", or something equally subjective. What I want to discuss is whether there is anything in ethics that is not, in the last analysis, subjective. |