It is time to inquire what we mean by “thoughts” when we say that Descartes was a series of thoughts. It would be more conventionally correct to say that Descartes’ mind was a series of thoughts, since his body is generally supposed to have been something different. His mind, we may say, was what Descartes was to himself and to no one else; whereas his body was public, and appeared to others as well as to himself. Descartes uses the word “thoughts” somewhat more widely than it would be used nowadays, and we shall, perhaps, avoid confusion if we substitute the phrase “mental phenomena.” Before we reach what would ordinarily be called “thinking,” there are more elementary occurrences, which come under the heads of “sensation” and “perception.” Common sense would say that perception always has an object, and that in general the object of perception is not mental. Sensation and perception would, in common parlance, not count as “thoughts.” Thoughts would consist of such occurrences as memories, beliefs, and desires. Before considering thoughts in this narrower sense, I should wish to say a few words about sensation and perception.
Both “sensation” and “perception” are somewhat confused concepts, and, as ordinarily defined, it may be doubted whether either ever occurs. Let us, therefore, in the first instance avoid the use of these words, and try to describe what occurs with as few doubtful assumptions as possible.
出典:Bertrand Russell : Mind and Matter (1950?)
詳細情報:https://russell-j.com/beginner/19501110_Mind-Matter050.HTM
自分(人間)は考える物(物質/物体)であるというデカルトの信念の代わりとして何に置き換えるべきだろうか? 二人のデカルトがいることは当然のことであり,その両者の区別は,私が議論したい問題を喚起することになる。(即ち)自分自身に対する(にとっての)デカルトと,彼の友人に対する(にとっての)デカルトとがあった(のである)。彼(デカルト)は,自分は自分自身に対してどうであったかに,関心を持っている。(しかし)自分は自分自身に対して何であるかということは,変化する状態を有する単一の実体としては,十分うまく記述されない(記述できない)。単一な実体(という概念)はまったく無駄な(無用な)ものであり,変化する諸状態(の集合)で十分である。デカルトは,自分に対しては,一連の出来事(event)として現れており,思考(思惟 a thought)という言葉を字義にとらわれないで解釈されるならば,それぞれの(ひとつの)出来事は,ひとつの思考(思惟)であると呼ぶことができるであろう(注:人間は,思考という現象の集合体であるということ)。彼が他人に対してどうであるかは,さしあたって無視することにしよう。デカルトの「精神(心)」を形作ったものはこの「思考(思惟)」系列であったが,彼の精神(心)はもはや単独の実体ではないことは,ニューヨークの全住民はニューヨークの数人の住人を越えた単独の実体でないのと同様である。(そこで)「デカルトは考える」という代わりに,我々は,「デカルトはその各要素が思考(思惟)であるところの思考の系列である」というべきである,そうして「それゆえにデカルトは存在する」という代りに,「デカルトはこの系列の名前であるので,デカルトは一つの名前である」と言わなければならない。しかし「デカルトは考える物(物質/物体)である」という陳述に対しては,この陳述は欠点をもった統語論(シンタックス)以外のなにものをも具現していないので,何物をもそれと入れかえてはならない。
What ought we to substitute for Descartes’ belief that he was a thing that thought? There were, of course, two Descartes, the distinction between whom is what gives rise to the problem I wish to discuss. There was Descartes to himself, and Descartes to his friends. He is concerned with what he was to himself. What he was to himself is not best described as a single entity with changing states. The single entity is quite otiose. The changing states suffice. Descartes to himself should have appeared as a series of events, each of which might be called a thought, provided that word is liberally interpreted. What he was to others I will, for the moment, ignore. It was this series of “thoughts” which constituted Descartes’ “mind,” but his mind was no more a separate entity than the population of New York is a separate entity over and above the several inhabitants. Instead of saying “Descartes thinks,” we ought to say “Descartes is a series of which the members are thoughts.” And instead of “therefore Descartes exists,” we ought to say “Since ‘Descartes’ is the name of this series, it follows that ‘Descartes’ is a name.” But for the statement “Descartes is a thing which thinks” we must substitute nothing whatever, since the statement embodies nothing but faulty syntax.
出典:Bertrand Russell : Mind and Matter (1950?)
詳細情報:https://russell-j.com/beginner/19501110_Mind-Matter040.HTM
周知のように,デカルトは「我思うゆえに我あり」(注:私は今考えている,従って考えている私は今存在しているはずだ)といい,あたかも新しいことは何も言わなかったかのように(注:当たり前のことを言ったかのごとく),ただちにさらに進んで,「私(我)は思考するひとつの物(注:物質/物体)である」と断言する。非常に多い誤り(誤謬)をわずかな言葉でひとまとめにすることは困難であろう(注:つまり,それほど間違いを多く含んでいるということ)。「我思う(I think 私は考える)」から始めると,「我(I 私)」という語は,文法に従うために(注:英文法においては主語を省略できないことになっているために)無理やり挿入されており,文法(というもの)は我々(英国人の)最初の祖先であるインド・ヨーロッパ語族の祖先が,野営の火を囲みながら呟いた形而上学を具体化している。それゆえ,「我(I 私)」という語を切り捨てなくてはならない。我々は,主語を捨てて,「think 考える」という語を残すだろう。なぜなら,主語(というの)は,思想(思考)から締め出さなければならない実体への信仰(信念)を具現化しているからである。「ゆえに,我あり(“therefore I am” )」という言葉は,「我(I 私)」という語に含まれている形而上学的罪を繰返しているだけでなく,引用符内の語を引用符をつけない語と混同するという,カルナップの諸著作を通じてさんざん笑いものにされた,さらなる別の罪を犯している(注:デカルトは最初の文で ”I think” と言って,その存在を証明しなければならない”I”(吾) を前提としてしまった上で,”therefore, I am (それゆえに我あり)” と断定していることになり,証明になっていない。)。私が「我あり(私は存在する)」あるいは「ソクラテスは存在した」あるいはそれに似た陳述をする場合には,私は,実際に,「我(I 私)」という語あるいは「ソクラテス」という語についてのあることをのべているのである。大まかに言えば,この語が名前である場合において,そうである。なぜなら,世界に存在する全てのものについて考えるならば,それらが二つの集合,即ち,存在するものと存在しないものとに分けることはできない,ということは明らかだからである。事実,非存在(存在しないこと)は,極めて稀な属性である。
二人のドイツの悲観主義的な哲学者の(次の)話を皆知っている(だろう)。その内の一人が,「生れなかったならばどれ程(より)幸福だったことだろう」と叫び,これに対しもう一人の哲学者は,ため息をつきながら,次のように応えた。「その通り,だがこの幸福な運命を達成した(幸運なくじを引いた)人間はなんとわずかなことか!
実際,存在するいかなるものについても有意味なことは言うことはできない。あなたが有意味に言えることは,存在(それ)を指し示す語はあるものを指示するということであり,「ハムレット」のような語についてはそれ(存在/実在)は言えないのである。劇中のハムレットに関する全ての陳述は「〝ハムレット″は(実在する物の)名前である Hamlet is a name」という誤った陳述を暗黙裡に含んでおり,これがその劇をデンマークの(実際)歴史の一部とみなすことのできない理由である。
それ故デカルトが「私は存在する」という時に彼の意味すべきことは「〝私″は名前である」である。これは疑いもなく非常に興味深い陳述であるが,デカルトがそれから導き出そうとした形而上学的結論はまったく含まれていない。けれども,これらのことは,私がデカルトの哲学で強調したい誤りではない。私が強調したいことは,「私は考えるもの(物/物体)である」ということに含まれている誤りである。ここでは,実体の哲学が仮定されている。世界は変化しつつある状態を有している多少とも永続的な対象(物体)から成り立っている,と仮定されている。この見解は,言語を発明した,また,最初は恐れ,その後食べてしまった同一人物だということを確信していたけれども,戦闘中の敵と殺害した後の敵との相違によって驚かされた,初期の形而上学者たちによって,展開されたものである。常識がその教義を導き出すのはこのような起源からである。そうして多くの哲学の教授たちが皆,常識におべっかを使い,そうしておそらく意図せずして,カニバル(cannibals 人食い人種)の野蛮な迷信の前に敬意を表してひざまづくことを自らの義務(責務)と考えていることは,悲しむべきことである。
Descartes, as everybody knows, says “I think, therefore I am,” and he goes on at once, as if he had said nothing new, to assert “I am a thing that thinks.” It would be difficult to pack so large a number of errors into so few words. To begin with “I think,” the word “I” is thrust in to conform with grammar, and grammar embodies the metaphysic of our original Indo-European ancestors as they stammered round their campfires. We must, therefore, cut out the word “I.” We will leave the word “think,” but without a subject, since the subject embodies a belief in substance which we must shut out of our thoughts. The words “therefore I am” not only repeat the metaphysical sin embodied in the word “I,” but commit the further sin, vigorously pilloried throughout the works of Carnap, of confounding a word in inverted commas with a word without inverted commas. When I say “I am,” or “Socrates existed,” or any similar statement, I am really saying something about the word “I” or the word “Socrates”–roughly speaking, in each case that this word is a name. For it is obvious that, if you think of all the things that there are in the world, they cannot be divided into two classes namely, those that exist, and those that do not. Non-existence, in fact, is a very rare property. Everybody knows the story of the two German pessimistic philosophers, of whom one exclaimed: “How much happier were it never to have been born.” To which the other replied with a sigh: “True! But how few are those who achieve this happy lot.” You cannot, in fact, say significantly of anything that it exists. What you can say significantly is that the word denoting it denotes something, which is not true of such a word as “Hamlet.” Every statement about Hamlet in the play has implicit the false statement ” ‘Hamlet’ is a name,” and that is why you cannot take the play as part of Danish history. So when Descartes says “I am,” what he ought to mean is “‘I’ is a name”– doubtless a very interesting statement, but not having all the metaphysical consequences which Descartes wishes to draw from it. These, however, are not the mistakes I wish to emphasize in Descartes’ philosophy. What I wish to emphasize is the error involved in saying “I am a thing that thinks.” Here the substance philosophy is assumed. It is assumed that the world consists of more or less permanent objects with changing states. This view was evolved by the original metaphysicians who invented language, and who were much struck by the difference between their enemy in battle and their enemy after he had been slain, although they were persuaded that it was the same person whom they first feared, and then ate. It is from such origins that common sense derives its tenets. And I regret to say that all too many professors of philosophy consider it their duty to be sycophants of common sense, and thus, doubtless unintentionally, to bow down in homage before the savage superstitions of cannibals.
出典:Bertrand Russell : Mind and Matter (1950?)
詳細情報:https://russell-j.com/beginner/19501110_Mind-Matter030.HTM
What one may call the conventional view has altered little since the days of the Cartesians. There is the brain, which acts according to the laws of physics; and there is the mind which, though it seems to have some laws of its own, is in many crucial ways subjected to physical conditions in the brain. The Cartesians supposed a parallelism according to which mind and brain were each determined by its own laws, but the two series were so related that, given an event in the one, it was sure to be accompanied by a corresponding event in the other. To take a simple analogy: suppose an Englishman and a Frenchman recite the Apostles’ Creed, one in English, the other in French, at exactly the same speed, you can then, from what one of them is saying at a given moment in his language, infer what the other is saying in his. The two series run parallel, though neither causes the other. Few people would now adhere to this theory in its entirety. The denial of interaction between mind and brain contradicts common sense, and never had any but metaphysical arguments in its favor. We all know that a physical stimulus, such as being hit on the nose, may cause a mental reaction in this case of pain. And we all know that this mental reaction of pain may be the cause of a physical movement for example, of the fist. There are, however, two opposing schools, not so much of thought as of practice. One school has as its ideal a complete physical determinism as regards the material universe, combined with a dictionary stating that certain physical occurrences are invariably contemporary with certain mental occurrences. There is another school, of whom the psycho-analysts are the most influential part, which seeks purely psychological laws and does not aim at first establishing a causal skeleton in physics. The difference shows in the interpretation of dreams. If you have a nightmare, the one school will say that it is because you ate too much lobster salad, and the other that it is because you are unconsciously in love with your mother. Far be it from me to take sides in so bitter a debate; my own view would be that each type of explanation is justified where it succeeds. Indeed I should view the whole matter in a way which makes the controversy vanish, but before I can make this clear, there is need of a considerable amount of theoretical clarification.
出典:Bertrand Russell : Mind and Matter (1950?)
詳細情報:https://russell-j.com/beginner/19501110_Mind-Matter020.HTM
Plato, reinforced by religion, has led mankind to accept the division of the known world into two categories mind and matter. Physics and psychology alike have begun to throw doubt on this dichotomy. It has begun to seem that matter, like the Cheshire Cat, is becoming gradually diaphanous until nothing of it is left but the grin, caused, presumably, by amusement at those who still think it is there. Mind, on the other hand, under the influence of brain surgery and of the fortunate opportunities provided by war for studying the effects of bullets embedded in cerebral tissue, has begun to appear more and more as a trivial by-product of certain kinds of physiological circumstances. This view has been reinforced by the morbid horror of introspection which besets those who fear that a private life, of no matter what kind, may expose them to the attentions of the police. We have thus a curiously paradoxical situation, reminding one of the duel between Hamlet and Laertes, in which students of physics have become idealists, while many psychologists are on the verge of materialism. The truth is, of course, that mind and matter are, alike, illusions. Physicists, who study matter, discover this fact about matter, psychologists, who study mind, discover this fact about mind. But each remains convinced that the other’s subject of study must have some solidity. What I wish to do in this essay is to restate the relations of mind and brain in terms not implying the existence of either.
出典:Bertrand Russell : Mind and Matter (1950?)
詳細情報:https://russell-j.com/beginner/19501110_Mind-Matter010.HTM
Although he has abolished the jungle, he still allows himself to be
governed by the law of the jungle. He has little sense of the common
tasks of humanity, of its achievements in the past and its possible
greater achievements in the future. He sees his fellow man not as a
collaborator in a common purpose, but as an enemy who will kill if he
is not killed. Whatever his sect or party may be, he believes that it
embodies ultimate and eternal wisdom, and that the opposite party
embodies ultimate and absolute folly. To any person with any
historical culture such a view is absurd. No portion of mankind in the
past was as good as it thought itself, or as bad as it was thought by
its enemies; but, in the past, humanity could achieve its common
purposes in spite of strife, though haltingly and with temporarily
disastrous setbacks. But in our age the new cleverness is only
compatible with survival if accompanied by a new wisdom. The wisdom that is needed is new only in one sense: that it must appeal to masses of men, and above all, to those who control great power. It is not new in the sense that it has never been proclaimed before. It has been proclaimed by wise men for many ages, but their wisdom has not been heeded. Now, the time is past when wisdom could be treated as nothing but the idle dream of visionaries. Sometimes in the moments when I am most oppressed by the fear of coming disaster, I am tempted to think that what the world needs is a Prophet who will proclaim, with a voice combining thunder with the deepest compassion, that the road upon which mankind is going is the wrong road — a road leading to the death of our children and to the extinction of all hope– but that there is another road which men can pursue if they will, and that this other road leads to a better world than any that has existed in the past. But, although this vision of a prophet can afford a momentary consolation, what the world needs is something more difficult, more rare. If a prophet were to arise in the East, he would be liquidated; if a prophet were to arise in the West, he would not be heard in the East and in the West would be condemned to obloquy. It is not by the action of any one individual, however great and however eloquent, that the world can be saved. It can be saved only when rulers and their followers in the most powerful countries of the world become aware that they have been pursuing a will-o’-the-wisp which is tempting them only toward ignominious death in a mire of futile hatred. The collective folly is not yet universal. Some nations stand wholly outside it, some are only partially victims to it. It is not too late to hope that mankind may have a future as well as a past. I believe that if men are to feel this hope with sufficient vividness to give it dynamic power, the awareness of history is one of the greatest forces of which the beneficent appeal must be felt.
出典:Bertrand Russell : History as an art (1954)
詳細情報:https://russell-j.com/beginner/1057_HasA-200.HTM
酔いしれた我々の時代(現代)に正気をもたらすことにおいて,歴史(書)は演ずべき重要な役割をもっていると,私は思います。これは,任意の想定上の「歴史の教訓」(注:みすず書房版の中村訳では “lessons of history” が「歴史課程」という訳になってしまっている!)によって,あるいは,実際に,安易に決まり文句に入れられた任意のものによって,もたらされると,私が言おうとしているのではありません。歴史家のためだけでなく,教育によって何らかの物の見方の広がりを与えられたすべての人たちのために,歴史(書)にとって可能であり,また歴史(書)がなすべきことは,現在の出来事や,それらの出来事の過去や未来に対する関係について,ある一定の平静な心(精神の平静さ)や、ある一定の考え方や感じ方,を生み出すことです。私は,トゥキディデス(紀元前460年頃 – 紀元前395年:古代アテナイの歴史家)は,自分の歴史(書)をアッテイカの悲劇を模範にして書いたというコーンフォードの学説を承認すべきかどうかわかりません。しかし,トゥキディデスがそうしたのであれば,彼が記録した出来事は,彼のその行為を十分正当化しているし,アテナイ人たちは,自分自身をありえそうな(実際起こりそうな)悲劇における役者の照明に照らしてみたならば,悲劇的な結果を避けるだけの知恵を彼らはもっていたことでしょう。悲劇は倣慢から生じるというのは古い(古代の)教義ですが,それは古いものであってもなお真理であり,倣慢は,傲慢が常に導いた災害を忘れた人々の間に,いつの時代にも再発します(繰り返し起こります)。どの時代にも繰返してそれがつねにそこへと導いてきた悲劇を忘れた人たちの間に起ります。我々の時代においては,人類は以前の時代に知られたあらゆるものを越えるほどの倣慢さに集団的にふけってきました。過去において,プロメテウスは,ゼウスの暴逆によって彼の慈愛に満ちた仕事を制止された,自称解放者と見なされましたが,現在我々は,プロメテウスの現代の追随者を制止するゼウスのいることを望み始めています。プロメテウスは,(天界から日を盗んで)人類に奉仕しようとしました。彼の現代の追随者たちは,人類の情熱に奉仕しています。(ただし)それはただそれらの追従者が気が狂っていて,破壊的である場合に限られています。現代の世界では,実験室により聡明な人間がおり,権力の座には愚か者がいます。より賢い人間は,アラビアンナイトのジン(妖霊)のように奴隷です。人類は,愚か者の指導の下に,また聡明な奴隷の巧妙なエ夫によって,集団で自らの(人類の)の根絶を準備する偉大な仕事に従事しています。このテーマ(人類根絶という主題)をそれにふさわしい扱い方のできる(現代の)トウキディデスがいることを願っています。権力の座にいる者が,もし歴史感覚を十分もっていたなれば,近づいていることが誰にもわかっており,誰も望んでいない大惨事を避ける方法を見つけるだろうと,私は考えざるをえません。なぜなら,歴史はあれこれの民族国家,あれこれの大陸の説明であるだけではありません。歴史の主題は,人類であり,人類は,他の(人間以外の)あらゆる他の生命形態を,また,人類に対する大きな危険において,生命のない自然の(様々な)力をさえ,支配する技術によって,地位を高めてきた,進化の奇妙な産物です。しかし,人類は,聴明であるにもかかわらず,人類を一つの家族と考えることを(今日まで)学びんできていません。
(注)プロメテウス:ギリシア神話に登場する男性神。ゼウスの反対を押し切り,(人類のためになると考えて)天界の火を盗んで(未熟な)人間に与えた。しかし、ゼウスの予言どおり,人間はその火を使って武器を作り戦争を始めた。この神話から,「プロメテウスの火」とは,原子力など,人間の力ではコントロールできないほど強大かつリスクの大きな科学技術の暗喩として用いられている。
I think that in bringing sanity to our intoxicated age, history has an important part to play. I do not mean that this is to be brought about by any supposed “lessons of history,” or indeed by anything easily put into a verbal formula. What history can and should do, not only for historians but for all whose education has given them any breadth of outlook, is to produce a certain temper of mind, a certain way of thinking and feeling about contemporary events and their relation to the past and the future. I do not know whether one should accept Cornford’s thesis that Thucydides modeled his history on Attic tragedy; but, if he did, the events that he recorded fully justified his doing so, and the Athenians, if they had seen themselves in the light of actors in a possible tragedy, might have had the wisdom to avert the tragic outcome. It is an ancient doctrine that tragedy comes of hubris, but it is none the less true for being ancient, and hubris recurs in every age among those who have forgotten the disasters to which it has always led. In our age, mankind collectively has given itself over to a degree of hubris surpassing everything known in former ages. In the past, Prometheus was regarded as a would-be liberator, restrained in his beneficent work by the tyranny of Zeus, but now we begin to wish that there were some Zeus to restrain the modern followers of Prometheus. Prometheus aimed to serve mankind: his modern followers serve the passions of mankind, but only in so far as they are mad and destructive. In the modern world there are clever men in laboratories and fools in power. The clever men are slaves, like Djinns in the Arabian Nights. Mankind collectively, under the guidance of the fools and by the ingenuity of the clever slaves, is engaged in the great task of preparing its own extermination. I wish there were a Thucydides to treat this theme as it deserves. I cannot but think that if the men in power were impregnated with a sense of history they would find a way of avoiding the catastrophe which all see approaching and which none desire, for history is not only an account this nation or that, nor even of this continent or that; its theme is Man, that strange product of evolution which has risen by means of skill to a mastery over all other forms of life, and even, at great peril to himself, to mastery over the forces of inanimate nature. But Man, in spite of his cleverness, has not learned to think of the human family as one.
出典:Bertrand Russell : History as an art (1954)
詳細情報:https://russell-j.com/beginner/1057_HasA-190.HTM
The decay in the writing of great histories is only part of the decay in the writing of great books. Men of science nowadays do not write books comparable to Newton’s Principia or Darwin’s Origin of Species. Poets no longer write epics. In the learned world, everything moves so fast that a massive book would be out of date before it could be published. Contributions to learning appear in periodicals, not in separate books, and few men in any branch of learning feel that there is time for that leisurely survey from which great books formerly sprang. There are of course exceptions. One of the most noteworthy is Professor Toynbee, whose work is as massive as any of those of former times. But the exceptions are not sufficiently numerous to disprove the general trend. I suppose the trend will remain until the world settles down to some form of progress less helter-skelter than the present race toward the abyss.
出典:Bertrand Russell : History as an art (1954)
詳細情報:https://russell-j.com/beginner/1057_HasA-180.HTM
私の友人のホワイトヘッドは,一時,パオロ・サルピの『トレント市会史』(注:Historia del concilio tridentino, 1619)を枕頭の書(就寝時のベットのお友)として使いました。現在生きている人でこのようなことをする人がいるか疑わしく思います(いないだろうと思います)。歴史(書)はかつてほど興味深いものではなくなってきましたが,それは,一部は,現代は非常に重要な出来事(事件)に充ちており,また,きわめて迅速な変化でいっぱいですので,多くの人は現世紀以前に注意をむける時間(暇)も気持ちも見出さないからです。ヒットラー,レーニン,スターリン,トロツキーの生涯は,それ自身,ナポレオンの生涯と同様に,興味深いものでしょうし,その上,現在の問題に一層関係があります。
しかし,残念ながら,歴史(書)の読書が衰えた理由が別にあり,それは歴史の大著作の衰退であることを認めなければなりません。ヘロドトス,トウキディデス,ポリビオス(注:ポリュビオス 古代ギリシアのメガロポリス生まれの歴史家),プルターク,タキトクス(の本)を,彼らの同時代の人たちがどれほど熱心に読んだか知りませんが,私たちは皆,18世紀及び19世紀の歴史家たちがどれほど熱心に歓迎されたかを知っています。英国では,クラレンドン(注:Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, 1609- 1674/初代クラレンドン伯爵)の『イングランドの反乱と内戦の歴史』からマコーレー(注:Thomas Macaulay,1800-1859,英国の歴史家/『イングランド史』で有名)までの長い歩み(進行)がありました。フランスでは,ボルテールの時代から,歴史(書)は競争相手の哲学者たちの戦場でした。ドイツではヘーゲルの刺激のもとに
,歴史家は聡明さと邪悪さとを同程度に結合させました。モムゼン(注:Theodor Mommsen, 1817- 1903,ドイツの歴史家,法学者で,1902年にノーベル文学賞受賞)が自分の歴史書には次の2つのテーマがあったと言っても,彼に対して不当(不公平)だとは考えません。即ち,一つは,自由を破壊したカエサル(シーザー)の偉大さというテーマと,もうひとつは,カルタゴの英国との類似とローマのドイツとの類似ゆえに,彼の期待する将来のカルタゴ戦争(注:Punic Wars カルタゴとローマ間のポエニ戦争のこと。ここでは英国とドイツとの戦争)は昔と同様の結果になるだろうというテーマです。有害な神話の流布におけるトライチュケ(Heinrich von Treitschke, 1834- 1896,ドイツの歴史家/反ユダヤ言動はナチスによって利用された。)の影響は一般に認められています。我々が歴史(書)の重要性を言う時,それは悪に対しても善に対しても同様に重要であることを認めなければなりません。特にこのことは,次第に民間伝承の一部となった人気のある神話に当てはまります。
The interest of the general reader in history has, I think, declined during the present century, and for my part I greatly regret this decline. There are a number of reasons for it. In the first place, reading altogether has declined. People go to the movies, or listen to the radio, or watch television. They indulge a curious passion for
changing their position on the earth’s surface as quickly as possible, which they combine with an attempt to make all parts of the earth’s surface look alike. But even those who persist in the habit of serious reading spend less of their time on history than serious readers formerly did. My friend Whitehead at one time employed Paolo Sarpi’s History of the Council of Trent as a bed book. I doubt whether there is now any person living who does likewise. History has ceased to be as interesting as it used to be, partly because the present is so full of important events, and so packed with quick-moving changes, that many people find neither time nor inclination to turn their attention to former centuries. A life of Hitler or Lenin or Stalin or Trotsky can be quite as interesting in itself as a life of Napoleon, and has, in addition, more relevance to present problems. But I am afraid we must admit that there is another cause for the decline of historical reading, and that is the decline of historical writing in the grand manner. I do not know how eagerly their contemporaries lapped up Herodotus or Thucydides or Polybius or Plutarch or Tacitus, but we all know the eagerness with which historians were welcomed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In Britain there was a long procession from Clarendon’s History of the Rebellion to Macaulay. In France, from the time of Voltaire onward, history was a battleground of rival philosophies. In Germany, under the inspiration of Hegel, historians combined brilliance and wickedness in equal proportions. I do not think it would be unfair to Mommsen to say that his history had two themes: one, the greatness of Caesar because he destroyed liberty; the other, that Carthage was like England and Rome was like Germany and that the future Punic Wars to which he looked forward would have an outcome analogous to that of their predecessors. The influence of Treitschke in spreading a pernicious myth is generally recognized. When we speak of the importance of history, we must admit its importance for evil as well as for good. This applies specially to the popular myths which have gradually become a part of folklore. I went once to Ireland with my two young children. My daughter, aged five, made friends with a peasant woman who treated her with great kindness. But, as we went away, the woman said: She’s a bonny girl, in spite of Cromwell.” It seemed a pity that the woman did not know either more history or less.
出典:Bertrand Russell : History as an art (1954)
詳細情報:https://russell-j.com/beginner/1057_HasA-170.HTM
I do not mean to subscribe to Carlyle’s cult of heroes, still less to Nietzsche’s exaggeration of it. I do not wish for one moment to suggest that the common man is unimportant, or that the study of masses of men is less worth pursuing than the study of notable individuals. I wish only to preserve a balance between the two. I believe that remarkable individuals have done a great deal to mold history. I think that, if the hundred ablest men of science of the seventeenth century had all died in infancy, the life of the common man in every industrial community would now be quite different from what it is. I do not think that if Shakespeare and Milton had not existed someone else would have composed their works. And yet this is the sort of thing that some “scientific” historians seem to wish one to believe.
I will go a step farther in agreement with those who emphasize the individual. I think that what is most worthy to be known and admired in human affairs has to do with individuals rather than with communities. I do not believe in the independent value of a collection of human beings over and above the value contained in their several lives, and I think it is dangerous if history neglects individual value in order to glorify a state, a nation, a church, or any other such collective entity. But I will not pursue this theme farther for fear of being led into politics.
出典:Bertrand Russell : History as an art (1954)
詳細情報:https://russell-j.com/beginner/1057_HasA-160.HTM