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.)
序論 n.6 |
Human Society in Ethics and Politics, 1954, introduction, n.6 | |||
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Every human being, after the first few days of his life, is a product of two factors: on the one hand, there is his congenital endowment; and on the other hand, there is the effect of environment, including education. There have been endless controversies as to the relative importance of these two factors. Pre-Darwinian reformers, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, attributed almost everjnhing to education; but, since Darwin, there has been a tendency to lay stress on heredity as opposed to environment. The controversy, of course, can be only as to the degree of importance of the two factors. Everyone must admit that each plays its part. Without attempting to reach any decision as to the matters in debate, we may assert pretty confidently that the impulses and desires which determine the behaviour of an adult depend to an enormous extent upon his education and his opportunities. The importance of this arises through the fact that some impulses, when they exist in two human beings or in two groups of human beings, are such as essentially involve strife, since the satisfaction of the one is incompatible with the satisfaction of the other; while there are other impulses and desires which are such that the satisfaction of one individual or group is a help, or at least not a hindrance, to the satisfaction of the other. The same distinction applies, though in a lesser degree, in an individual life. I may desire to get drunk tonight and to have my faculties at their very best tomorrow morning. These desires get in each other’s way. Borrowing a term from Leibniz’s account of possible worlds, we may call two desires or impulses “compossible” when both can be satisfied, and “conflicting” when the satisfaction of the one is incompatible with that of the other. If two men are both candidates for the Presidency of the United States, one of them must be disappointed. But if two men both wish to become rich, the one by growing cotton and the other by manufacturing cotton cloth, there is no reason why both should not succeed. It is obvious that a world in which the aims of different individuals or groups are com- possible is likely to be happier than one in which they are conflicting. It follows that it should be part of a wise social system to encourage compossible purposes, and discourage conflicting ones, by means of education and social systems designed to this end. |