この学派(注:ラッセルに批判的なオックスフォード学派)の著作を読むとき、私は、もし仮にデカルトがライプニッツとロックの時代に奇蹟的に生き返ったとしたら(restored to life 蘇る)抱いたであろう(抱いた可能性のある)奇妙な感情を抱いている。1914年以来(注:第一次大戦勃発以来)、私は自分の時間と精力の大部分を哲学以外の事柄に向けてきた。その期間(注:1950年代まで)、3つの哲学が次々に(successively)英国哲学界を支配した。第一期は、ヴィットゲンシュタインの『論考(論理哲学論考)』の哲学であり、第二期は、論理実証主義者達の哲学であり、第三期はヴィットゲンシュタインの「哲学的探究』 (Philosophical Investigations) の哲学であった。これら3つのうち、第一のものは私自身の思想に非常に大きな影響を与えた。ただし。この影響が全てにおいて良いものであったとは、私は今では考えていない。 第二の学派、即ち論理実証主義に対しては、私はその最も特徴的な学説のいくつかには不賛成ではあったが、全般的に共感を抱いた。 第三の学派 -これを便宜上私はWIIで表わし、『論考』の学説を WIと呼んで区別する- は私は今でもまったく理解できないものである。この学説が肯定的に主張するところは私には些細でとるにたりないものに見え、その否定的に主張するところ(訳注:~は間違いだと主張しているもの)は根拠を欠いているように見える。 ヴィトゲンシュタインの「哲学的探究』の中に私は興味深いと思われるもの(記述)を(これまで)何も見出しておらず、どうして人の学派全体(全員)がこの本の中に重要な知恵を見出すのか理解できない。心理学的にも(Psychologically)これは驚くべきことである。 私が親しく知っていた初期のヴィトゲンシュタインは、熱情的に熱烈に(集中的に)考えることに没頭する人間であり、彼と同様に私も重要だと感じていた難問を深く意識しており、また、彼は真の哲学的天才(才能)を具えていた(あるいは少なくとも私は当時そう考えていた)。それとは反対に、後期のヴィトゲンタインは、真剣な思索に飽きてしまい、そういう活動を不必要とさせるような学説を考案(発明)したように思われる。こういった結果(怠惰)を持つような学説を真だとは、私は一瞬たりとも信じない。けれども、私は自分がそういう学説に対して圧倒的に強い先入観(訳注:bias ラッセルが言う「偏見」や「先入観」は誰でもが持たざるをえない支配的な考えのことであり、世間一般的な意味ではないので要注意)をいだく者であることを認識している。というのも、もしそういう学説が真であるなら、哲学は最善の場合でも辞典の編集者に僅かな助けとなるだけであり、最悪の場合には無益な茶のみ話(an idle tea-table amusement)になるからである(訳注:これは、オックスフォード学派が言葉の意味の分析のみをしていることに対するラッセルの批判です)。
Chapter 18: Some Replies to Criticism, n.1_2 In reading the works of this school I have a curious feeling such as Descartes might have had if he had been miraculously restored to life in the time of Leibniz and Locke. Ever since 1914 I have given a large part of my time and energy to matters other than philosophy. During the period since 1914 three philosophies have successively dominated the British philosophical world: first that of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, second that of the Logical Positivists, and third that of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. Of these, the first had very considerable influence upon my own thinking, though I do not now think that this influence was wholly good. The second school, that of the Logical Positivists, had my general sympathy though I disagreed with some of its most distinctive doctrines. The third school, which for convenience I shall designate as WII to distinguish it from the doctrines of the Tractatus which I shall call WI, remains to me completely unintelligible. Its positive doctrines seem to me trivial and its negative doctrines unfounded. I have not found in Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations anything that seemed to me interesting and I do not understand why a whole school finds important wisdom in its pages. Psychologically this is surprising. The earlier Wittgenstein, whom I knew intimately, was a man addicted to passionately intense thinking, profoundly aware of difficult problems of which I, like him, felt the importance, and possessed (or at least so I thought) of true philosophical genius. The later Wittgenstein, on the contrary, seems to have grown tired of serious thinking and to have, invented a doctrine which would make such an activity unnecessary. I do not for one moment believe that the doctrine which has these lazy consequences is true. I realize, however, that I have an overpoweringly strong bias against it, for, if it is true, philosophy is, at best, a slight help to lexicographers, and at worst, an idle tea-table amusement. Source: My Philosophical Development, 1959, by Bertrand Russell More info.: https://russell-j.com/beginner//BR_MPD_18-040.HTM
アームソン氏の著書『哲学的分析』(Philosophical Analysis)は非常に有益な目的を果している。 それは、比較的小さな範囲内において(注:within a comparatively small compass/ “in a small compass” : 小範囲内に;簡潔に)、ウィトゲンシュタインとその弟子達が、私の哲学および論理実証主義者達の哲学をどちらもしりぞけて,代りに,先行のいかなる哲学よりも優れていると固く信ずる新しい哲学を採用するにいたった理由を述べている。 アームソン氏はその論評する古い方の見解(earlier views)がどういうものであるかを非常に公平に語っている。また、新しい見解を擁護する(支持する)ために彼が進める論拠(議論)も、それを信奉す人々によって適切に見えるであろうと思われる。 しかし、私自身はアームソン氏が提出する論拠(議論)の中に、いかなる正当性をも全く認めることができない。しかも(And)、彼自身の観点(見解)から言っても、 彼の著書の欠陥と判断されなければならないひとつの重要な点がある。彼は、彼が批評している最近20年間に出されたものに、明らかに気づいていない。(訳注:野田氏はこの一行を次のように訳しているが、どうしてこのような訳し方をするのか納得できない。即ち、「彼は、彼が批評している学派の書物でここ二十年の間に出たものは考慮に入れていないとはっきり言っている)。 論理実証主義者達と私は、我々の学説(doctrines)の欠陥と思われるものを、様々な点で修正しようと(これまで=最近20年間)試みてきたが、そういう試みはアームソン氏によって気づかれていない。 この点において、彼は自分が属する学派全体の慣行(いつものやり方)にならっているだけである。
Chapter 18: Some Replies to Criticism, n.1 S Some Replies to Criticism n.1 : Philosophical Analysis: Its Development Between the Two World Wars. J. O. Urmson. Oxford at the Clarendon Press. 1956. Mr Urmson’s book Philosophical Analysis serves a very useful purpose. It gives within a comparatively small compass the reasons which have led Wittgenstein and his disciples to reject both my philosophy and that of the Logical Positivists and to substitute a new philosophy which they firmly believe to be better than any of its predecessors. Mr Urmson states very fairly such earlier views as he discusses, and I suppose that the arguments which he advances in favour of the newer views are such as seem cogent to their adherents. I find myself totally unable to see any cogency whatever in the arguments that Mr Urmson advances. And there is one important respect in which, from his own point of view, his book must be judged defective. He avowedly does not notice any writings of the schools which he is criticizing that have appeared during the last twenty years. The Logical Positivists and I have in various respects tried to remedy what seemed to us defects in our doctrines, but such attempts are not noticed by Mr Urmson. In this he is only following the practice of the whole school to which he belongs. Source: My Philosophical Development, 1959, by Bertrand Russell More info.: https://russell-j.com/beginner//BR_MPD_18-030.HTM
Chapter 18: Some Replies to Criticism, n.2 There are two great men in history whom he somewhat resembles. One was Pascal, the other was Tolstoy. Pascal was a mathematician of genius, but abandoned mathematics for piety. Tolstoy sacrificed his genius as a writer to a kind of bogus humility which made him prefer peasants to educated men and Uncle Tom’s Cabin to all other works of fiction. Wittgenstein, who could play with metaphysical intricacies as cleverly as Pascal with hexagons or Tolstoy with emperors, threw away this talent and debased himself before common sense as Tolstoy debased himself before the peasants — in each case from an impulse of pride. I admired Wittgenstein’s Tractatus but not his later work, which seemed to me to involve an abnegation of his own best talent very similar to those of Pascal and Tolstoy. His followers, without (so far as I can discover) undergoing the mental torments which make him and Pascal and Tolstoy pardonable in spite of their treachery to their own greatness, have produced a number of works which, I am told, have merit, and in these works they have set forth a number of arguments against my views and methods. I have been unable, in spite of serious efforts, to see any validity in their criticisms of me. I do not know whether this is due to blindness on my part or whether it has some more justifiable grounds. I hope the reader will be helped to form a judgment on this point by four polemical articles which have already been published in learned journals but which arc here reprinted. The four articles in question are: (1) on ‘Philosophical Analysis’ which is a review of a book by Mr Urmson; (2) ‘Logic and Ontology’, which is an examination of a chapter by Mr Warnock called ‘Metaphysics in Logic’; (3) ‘Mr Strawson on Referring’, which is a rebuttal of his criticism of my theory of descriptions; and (4) ‘What is Mind?’: which is a review of Professor Ryle’s book The Concept of Mind, Source: My Philosophical Development, 1959, by Bertrand Russell More info.:https://russell-j.com/beginner//BR_MPD_18-020.HTM
この頃の私の数学に対する態度は、「数学の研究」と名付けられた論文に表われている。これは1907年に「The New Quarterly」誌 に発表され、また、(私の)『 Philosophical Essays(哲学論文集)』(1910年刊)に再録された。この論文集からの(以下の)いくつかの引用が、当時私の感じていたことを例証している。
============================= 数学は、正しく見れば、真理を持つだけでなく、最高の美を持っている。その美は、彫刻の美のように、冷たく簡素な(禁欲的な)美であり、我々(人間)の本性の弱い部分に訴えることなく、絵画や音楽のような立派な装飾を持たず、しかるに(yet)この上なく純粋で ただ最高の芸術のみが示すことができるような厳しい完全性を持ちうるのである。喜びの真の精神、 精神の高揚、人間以上のものであるという感じは、- これこそ最高の卓越性の証拠であり- 詩の中においてと同様に確実に(as surely as)、数学の中に見出すことができる。数学における最上のものは、単に課題として学ぶ価値があるだけでなく、日常的な思考の一部として吸収され(同化され)、繰り返し繰り返しそれを心に思うことによって、常に新たな励ましをもたらしてくれる。 実生活(real life )は大多数の人にとって長期にわたる次善のもの( a long second-best)であり、理想と可能との間における絶えざる妥協(の産物)である。しかし、純粋理性の世界は妥協を知らず,実際上の制限を知らず、 全て偉大な作品が生まれいづる(ところの)完全なものへの熱情的な憧憬を見事な建造物に具体化(具現化)する創造的活動を妨げる何ものをも知らない(のである)。人間の情念から遠く離れ、自然の事実からさえも遠く離れ、 幾世代もの人々が、一つの秩序ある宇宙を造り出してきた(きている)。 そこには純粋な思考がその自然の住処(すみか:s in its natural home)を見出すことができ、我々(人間)の持つ高貴な衝動の少なくとも一つが、現実世界の悲惨な流浪(he dreary exile of the actual world.)から逃れることができるのである。
非人間的なるものについての熟考(沈思黙考)、我々の精神によって作り出されたものではない材料をとり扱うことができるという発見、とりわけ、美が(人間の)内的世界に属するように外的世界にも属していると理解する(悟る)ことは、外的な力がほぼ全能(the all-but omnipotence of alien forces)であるのを認めることからあまりにもしばしば生ずる、あのおそるべき無力感、虚弱感、敵意ある諸力の中に追放されているという意識を克服するための主な手段である。運命の支配に対して -運命の支配というのは、(上述の)諸力を単に文学的に擬人化(personification)したものにすぎない- おごそかな美を展示して我々と和解させることは、悲劇の任務とするところである。しかし、数学は人間的なるものからさらに一層我々を引き離し、現実世界のみならずあらゆる可能世界が従わなければならない(ところの)絶対的必然性の領域に我々を連れてゆく。そして まさにこの所に、数学はその住みかを建てる、あるいはむしろ、永遠の昔から立っている住みかを見出す のであり、そこでは我々の理想は完全に満たされ、我々の最上の希望は阻止されないのである。
Chapter 17: Retreat from Pythagoras ,n.3 My attitude to mathematics at this time was expressed in an article called ‘The Study of Mathematics’, which was printed in The New Quarterly in 1907, and reprinted in Philosophical Essays (1910). Some quotations from this essay illustrate what I then felt: Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty — a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show. The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as in poetry. What is best in mathematics deserves not merely to be learnt as a task, but to be assimilated as a part of daily thought, and brought again and again before the mind with ever-renewed encouragement. Real life is, to most men, a long second-best, a perpetual compromise between the ideal and the possible; but the world of pure reason knows no compromise, no practical limitations, no barrier to the creative activity embodying in splendid edifices the passionate aspiration after the perfect from which all great work springs. Remote from human passions, remote even from the pitiful facts of nature, the generations have gradually created an ordered cosmos, where pure thought can dwell as in its natural home, and where one, at least, of our nobler impulses can escape from the dreary exile of the actual world. The contemplation of what is non-human, the discovery that our minds are capable of dealing with material not created by them, above all, the realization that beauty belongs to the outer world as to the inner, are the chief means of overcoming the terrible sense of impotence, of weakness, of exile amid hostile powers, which is too apt to result from acknowledging the all-but omnipotence of alien forces. To reconcile us, by the exhibition of its awful beauty, to the reign of Fate — which is merely the literary personification of these forces — is the task of tragedy. But mathematics takes us still further from what is human, into the region of absolute necessity, to which not only the actual world, but every possible world must conform; and even here it builds a habitation, or rather finds a habitation eternally standing, where our ideals are fully satisfied and our best hopes are not thwarted. Too often it is said that there is no absolute truth but only opinion and private judgment; that each of us is conditioned, in his view of the world, by his own peculiarities, his own taste and bias; that there is no external kingdom of truth to which, by patience, by discipline, we may at last obtain admittance, but only truth for me, for you, for every separate person. By this habit of mind one of the chief ends of human effort is denied, and the supreme virtue of candour, of fearless acknowledgment of what is, disappears from our moral vision. In a world so full of evil and suffering, retirement into the cloister of contemplation, to the enjoyment of delights which, however noble, must always be for the few only, cannot but appear as a somewhat selfish refusal to share the burden imposed upon others by accidents in which justice plays no part. Have any of us the right, we ask, to withdraw from present evils, to leave our fellowmen unaided, while we live a life which, though arduous and austere, is yet plainly good in its own nature? All this, though I still remember the pleasure of believing it, has come to seem to me largely nonsense, partly for technical reasons and partly from a change in my general outlook upon the world. Mathematics has ceased to seem to me non-human in its subject-matter. I have come to believe, though very reluctantly, that it consists of tautologies. I fear that, to a mind of sufficient intellectual power, the whole of mathematics would appear trivial, as trivial as the statement that a four-footed animal is an animal. I think that the timelessness of mathematics has none of the sublimity that it once seemed to me to have, but consists merely in the fact that the pure mathematician is not talking about time. I cannot any longer find any mystical satisfaction in the contemplation of mathematical truth. Source: My Philosophical Development, 1959, by Bertrand Russell More info.: https://russell-j.com/beginner//BR_MPD_17-030.HTM
Chapter 17: Retreat from Pythagoras ,n.2 My interest in the applications of mathematics was gradually replaced by an interest in the principles upon which mathematics is based. This change came about through a wish to refute mathematical scepticism. A great deal of the argumentation that I had been told to accept was obviously fallacious, and I read whatever books I could find that seemed to offer a firmer foundation for mathematical beliefs. This kind of research led me gradually further and further from applied mathematics into more and more abstract regions, and finally into mathematical logic. I came to think of mathematics, not primarily as a tool for understanding and manipulating the sensible world, but as an abstract edifice subsisting in a Platonic heaven and only reaching the world of sense in an impure and degraded form. My general outlook, in the early years of this century, was profoundly ascetic. I disliked the real world and sought refuge in a timeless world, without change or decay or the will-o’-the-wisp of progress. Although this outlook was very serious and sincere, I sometimes expressed it in a frivolous manner. My brother-in-law, Logan Pearsall Smith, had a set of questions that he used to ask people. One of them was, ‘What do you particularly like?’ I replied, ‘Mathematics and the sea, and theology and heraldry, the two former because they are inhuman, the two latter because they are absurd’. This answer, however, took the form that it did from a desire to win the approval of the questioner. Source: My Philosophical Development, 1959, by Bertrand Russell More info.: https://russell-j.com/beginner//BR_MPD_17-020.HTM
Chapter 17: Retreat from Pythagoras ,n.1 My philosophical development, since the early years of the present century, may be broadly described as a gradual retreat from Pythagoras. The Pythagoreans had a peculiar form of mysticism which was bound up with mathematics. This form of mysticism greatly affected Plato and had, I think, more influence upon him than is generally acknowledged. I had, for a time, a very similar outlook and found in the nature of mathematical logic, as I then supposed its nature to be, something profoundly satisfying in some important emotional respects. As a boy, my interest in mathematics was more simple and ordinary: it had more affinity with Thales than with Pythagoras. I was delighted when I found things in the real world obeying mathematical laws. I liked the lever and the pulley and the fact that falling bodies describe parabolas. Although I could not play billiards, I liked the mathematical theory of how billiard balls behave. On one occasion, when I had a new tutor, I spun a penny and he said, ‘Why does the penny spin?’ I replied, ‘Because I make a couple with my fingers’. He was surprised and remarked, ‘What do you know about couples?’ I replied airily, ‘Oh, I know all about couples’. When, on one occasion, I had to mark the tennis court myself, I used the theorem of Pythagoras to make sure that the lines were at right angles with each other. An uncle of mine took me to call on Tyndall, the eminent physicist. While they were talking to each other, I had to find my own amusement. I got hold of two walking-sticks, each with a crook. I balanced them on one finger, inclining them in opposite directions so that they crossed each other at a certain point. Tyndall looked round and asked what I was doing. I replied that I was thinking of a practical way of determining the centre of gravity, because the centre of gravity of each stick must be vertically below my finger and therefore at the point where the sticks crossed each other. Presumably in consequence of this remark, Tyndall gave me one of his books, The Forms of Water, I hoped, at that time, that all science could become mathematical, including psychology. The parallelogram of forces shows that a body acted on by two forces simultaneously will pursue a middle course, inclining more towards the stronger force. I hoped that there might be a similar ‘parallelogram of motives’– a foolish idea, since a man who comes to a fork in the road and is equally attracted to both roads, does not go across the fields between them. Science had not then arrived at the ‘all-or-nothing principle’ of which the importance was only discovered during the present century. I thought, when I was young, that two divergent attractions would lead to a Whig compromise, whereas it has appeared since that very often one of them prevails completely. This has justified Dr Johnson in the opinion that the Devil, not the Almighty, was the first Whig. Source: My Philosophical Development, 1959, by Bertrand Russell More info.: https://russell-j.com/beginner//BR_MPD_17-010.HTM
Chapter 14: , n.1 The problems connected with universals and particulars and with the closely related matter of proper names have occupied a great deal of my thought ever since I abandoned the monistic logic. The problems are old, in fact at least as old as Aristotle. They occupied much of the speculation of the mediaeval Schoolmen, whose work in this connection still deserves serious consideration. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, differences as to the psychological and metaphysical status of universals were among the most important points of controversy between Continental philosophers and British empiricists. I set forth some of these traditional views in Polemic in the form of a fable (No. 2 , 194 ( 5 , pages 24 – 5 ): Source: My Philosophical Development, 1959, by Bertrand Russell More info. https://russell-j.com/beginner/BR_MPD_14-010.HTM