Buddha is said to have asserted that he could not be happy so long as even one human being was suffering. This is carrying things to an extreme and, if taken literally, would be excessive, but it illustrates that universalizing of feeling of which I am speaking.
Source： Bertrand Russell: A Philosophy of Our Time (1953)
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* a brief comment:
In today's "Russell's Words of the Day," you might wonder whether the phrase "so long as even one human being was suffering" really needs the words "human being," since it seems obvious that the suffering being referred to here is a human. I thought the same for a moment, but then I started to feel that perhaps including the words "human being" might actually be better, so I asked ChatGPT about it.
As you can see below, ChatGPT also concluded that including the phrase is preferable.
** ChatGPT's response **
To put it simply, since Russell's original text explicitly says "so long as even one human being was suffering," it is meaningful to deliberately include "人間が" (human being) in the translation. That said, depending on the context and how the reader interprets it, omitting it might sound more natural in Japanese.
Analysis: Why does Russell explicitly say "human being"?
Because he uses the phrase "so long as even one human being was suffering," several implications can be drawn:
The focus is specifically on human suffering, not that of animals.
Through the story of Buddha, Russell illustrates how the universalization of feeling applies to human society as a whole.
If animals were included as well, the idea that one cannot be happy so long as anyone is suffering becomes nearly impossible to realize, and the parable loses clarity.
He presumes a human-centered ethical view, in which the sharing of human suffering is central.
In Russell's time, or in this particular context, emphasizing that the subject is human may have been essential.
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