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.)
『ヒューマン・ソサエティ』第6章:道徳的義務 n.23 |
Human Society in Ethics and Politics, 1954, chapter 6: Moral obligation, n.23 | |||
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Let us first take the egoistic alternative, and let us not forget that we defined “good” as “satisfaction of desire”. I may be so benevolent that I desire the general good more than I desire anything else; in that case, my good and the general good coincide, and our two precepts lead to identical results. Or, again, it may be that, though my strongest desires have reference to myself, they are such as to prompt only acts conducive to the general good; this may happen, for example, if my strongest desire is that I should be a benevolent person or that I should be “married to immortal verse”. Moral systems that are egoistic in the sense with which we are at present concerned need not be selfish in the ordinary sense. The Stoics, for instance, held that each man should seek his own virtue, but they held that in so doing he would promote the general good. They did not, however, define “good” as “satisfaction of desire”; only certain desires had objects that were good. If you desired riches or power or any kind of worldly prosperity, you were desiring what was worthless; only virtue was truly good, and only virtue would be desired by the virtuous man. And virtue consisted in conformity with the will of God. |