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』第２部[「情熱の葛藤」- 第２章- Human Society in Ethics and Politics, 1954, Part II, chapter 4
* 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２部「情熱の葛藤」- 第４章「神話と魔力」n.11 |
Human Society in Ethics and Politics, 1954, part II: The Conflict of Passions, chapter 4: Myth and Magic, n.11 |
|
罪の意識（The sense of sin）や（責任感に基づく）罪悪感（The sense of guilt）は、支配したいという欲望と支配されたいという欲望という、互いに関連性を持つ一連の感情の一部である。ほとんどの人は両方の欲求を持っているが、人によっては一方が強く、他方が弱い場合がある。支配されたいという欲望は、支配したいという欲望と同じくらい深く、自発的なものである。この両方の欲求が存在しているからこそ、長年にわたり社会的不平等の体制が持続してきたのある。王、司祭（僧侶）、貴族が存在し得るのは、命令することに喜びを見出す人々がいる一方で、他方では命令に従うことに、同じくらいの喜びを見出すように見える人々がいるという事実によっている。そして、最も絶対的に命令を下す者でさえ、自分たちよりもさらに強大で、彼ら自身が臣下から得ているのと同種の服従を捧げるに値する天上の存在に、あるいは天上の存在がいるという信念に、満足を見出す。いかなる強さを持つ社会制度にも、このような指導者と従者の階層的秩序が存在し、その階層の一段階における指導者は、別の段階では従者となる。これは特に宗教的信仰の領域において当てはまる。宗教を発明したり、それを広く受け入れさせる（原因となったりする）人々は、宗教が最も宗教的な共同体の中でさえ、普通の男女の生活におけるよりもはるかに大きな役割を果している例外的な人々である。宗教的指導者において例外的である要素は、人によって、また宗教によって異なる。指揮命令への衝動と服従への衝動の両方が例外的に強いというタイプがある。ロヨラ（イエズス会の創設者イグナティウス・ロヨラ）は、このタイプのほぼ完璧な例として挙げることができるだろう。このような精神構造を持つ人間にとって、罪の概念とそれにふさわしい神話的背景は、まさにふさわしい。彼自身は、神または神々に対しては、哀れな罪人である。彼は他人に対する面目を損なうことなく、私的な祈りの孤独の中で自らを卑下することができる。彼は、快楽を諦め、地獄の苦痛よりも軽いと信じる苦痛を自ら進んで耐えることで、赦しを求めることができる。そして、これらの苦痛が地獄の苦痛の代わりとして受け入れられる可能性があると信じている。このようにして、彼の想像力が天上的な力を作り出し、それに対して自分が虫けらにすぎないと告白することで、彼の服従への衝動は完全に満たされるが、それが彼の支配への衝動にとって障害になることはないのである。 |
The sense of sin or guilt is part of a whole system of feelings which have to do with the correlative, though opposite, desires to dominate and to be dominated. Most people have both, though in some the one is stronger, and in others, the other. The wish to be dominated is quite as profound and spontaneous as the wish to dominate. It is only the existence of both that has made possible the persistence through many centuries of systems of social inequality. Kings, priests and aristocracies are rendered possible by the fact that, while some find pleasure in commanding, others find apparently equal pleasure in obeying. And even those who command most absolutely find satisfaction in the belief that there are heavenly Beings, or that there is a heavenly Being, even more powerful than themselves and deserving from them the same kind of submissiveness as they obtain from their subjects. In all social institutions that have any strength there is this hierarchical order of leaders and followers, the leaders at one step of the hierarchy being the followers at another. This is true, more particularly, in the sphere of religious belief. The men who invent religions, or cause them to be widely accepted, are exceptional men in whom religion plays a much larger part than it does in the lives of ordinary men and women even in the most religious communities. What it is that is exceptional in a religious leader varies from man to man, and from one religion to another. There is a certain type in which both the impulses, towards command and towards submission, are exceptionally strong. I think Loyola might be taken as an almost perfect instance of this type. For a man with this mentality the concept of sin, with its appropriate surroundings of myth, is exactly suitable. He himself, in relation to God or the gods, is a miserable sinner. He can abase himself in the solitude of private prayer without loss of face in regard to other men. He can seek forgiveness by forgoing pleasures, and by the voluntary endurance of pains which, he believes, are less than the pains of Hell and may be accepted in lieu of them. In this way, when his imagination has created heavenly powers in relation to which he can confess himself to be but a worm, his impulses to submission are fully satisfied without becoming at any point an obstacle to his impulses of dominion. On tlie contrary, since all men are sinners, and since he is engaged in a heroic struggle with his own sinfulness, he has every right to use the strength of character obtained by self-discipline in the equally delectable task of disciplining others. From his own asceticism he passes easily to the task of depriving others of the pleasures which he has forgone, and, although to us he may seem to be engaged in the pursuit of power, he appears before the bar of his conscience as engaged in the enforcement of virtue. Most stern moralists are in the habit of thinking of pleasure as only of the senses, and, when they eschew the pleasures of sense, they do not notice that the pleasures of power, which to men of their temperament are far more attractive, have not been brought within the ban of their ascetic self-denial. It is the prevalence of this type of psychology in forceful men which has made the notion of sin so popular, since it combines so perfectly humility towards heaven with self-assertion here on earth. The concept of sin has not the hold upon men’s imaginations that it had in the Middle Ages, but it still dominates the thoughts of many clergymen, magistrates and school-masters. When the great Dr. Arnold walked on the shores of the Lake of Como, it was not the beauty of the scene that occupied his thoughts. He meditated, so he tells us, on moral evil. I rather fear that it was the moral evil of school-boys rather than school-masters that produced his melancholy reflexions. However that may be, he was led to the unshakable belief that it is good for boys to be flogged. One of the great rewards that a belief in sin has always offered to the virtuous is the opportunity which it affords of inflicting pain without compunction. |