ジャンル: 哲学
英語難易度: ★★☆
オススメ度: ★★★☆☆
幸福論と聞くとなんか堅苦しいですが「幸福の獲得」の直訳の方がしっくりきます。 そう、獲得。 まさに、幸せは待っていてもタナボタ的には来ない、だから歩いて行くんだねー、です。
数学者、論理学者で有名なラッセルの本なので難しさに身構えていましたが、随筆風のためか結構読みやすかったですね。 難しい言葉は一切使わずに、真摯に読者に語りかける筆致を好ましく感じました。
(1930年発刊)
メモポイント
(心に残るフレーズが多かったので引用多めです)
- 虚栄心。これをこじらせると何をやっても楽しめない。やる気を失い退屈してしまう。
Vanity, when it passes beyond a point, kills pleasure in every activity for its own sake, and thus leads inevitably to listlessness and boredom.
- 悩みとは結構単純。 明日食べるものもなくて本当に死んでしまうかも、という悩みの持ち主などそうはいない。 たいていの場合、嫉妬により単に他人と比べて自分の方が上だ、もっと優れている、と思いたいのに満たされないだけだ。
What people mean, therefore, by the struggle for life is really the struggle for success. What people fear when they engage in the struggle is not that they will fail to get their breakfast next morning, but that they will fail to outshine their neighbours.
- 不幸を感じるのは、他人と比較して優位に立ち成功したいという欲望があるからだ。 もちろん成功することは、社会的に地位が上がったりお金持ちになるなど、幸せになる大きな要素であることは間違いない。 しかしあくまでもそれは一つの要素。 他の大事な要素を犠牲にしてまで追い求めるべきではない。
The root of the trouble springs from too much emphasis upon competitive success as the main source of happiness. I do not deny that the feeling of success makes it easier to enjoy life. A painter, let us say, who has been obscure throughout his youth, is likely to become happier if his talent wins recognition. Nor do I deny that money, up to a certain point, is very capable of increasing happiness; beyond that point, I do not think it does so. What I do maintain is that success can only be one ingredient in happiness, and is too dearly purchased if all the other ingredients have been sacrificed to obtain it.
- 悩んでも仕方がない時に悩んでしまうのはムダ。 そして一度決めたらそれを覆す新たなインプットがない限りは決断を変えない。優柔不断は疲れるだけ。
It is amazing how much both happiness and efficiency can be increased by the cultivation of an orderly mind, which thinks about a matter adequately at the right time rather than inadequately at all times. When a difficult or worrying decision has to be reached, as soon as all the data are available, give the matter your best thought and make your decision; having made the decision, do not revise it unless some new fact comes to your knowledge. Nothing is so exhausting as indecision, and nothing is so futile.
- 趣味の大切さ。 子供じみたこととバカにしてはいけない。 気晴らしがあることは幸福の重要な要素である。 広く興味を持つことは、それが人を傷つけたりするようなものでなければ大変に結構なことである。いろんな物事にアンテナを張り巡らせて、人に対してネガティブにならず友好的な関係を保ちつつ様々なことに興味を持つ、これが大事。これが幸せのヒント。
One of the most eminent of living mathematicians divides his time equally between mathematics and stamp-collecting. I imagine that the latter affords consolation at the moments when he can make no progress with the former. The difficulty of proving propositions in the theory of numbers is not the only sorrow that stamp-collecting can cure, nor are stamps the only things that can be collected. Consider what a vast field of ecstasy opens before the imagination when one thinks of old China, snuffboxes, Roman coins, arrow-heads, and flint implements. It is true that many of us are too 'superior' for these simple pleasures. We have all experienced them in boyhood, but have thought them, for some reason, unworthy of a grown man. This is a complete mistake; any pleasure that does no harm to other people is to be valued. (中略)
The secret of happiness is this: let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.
- いろいろ興味を持っている人の方が、そうじゃない人よりも幸せになる確率は高い。楽しめることが多い人の方が幸せな人生だ。楽しみという軸足を様々な分野に多く持つことによって、周りの環境にあまり左右されずに生きていける。
To the man who likes them they are good; to the man who dislikes them they are not. But the man who likes them has a pleasure which the other does not have; to that extent his life is more enjoyable and he is better adapted to the world in which both must live. (中略)
The more things a man is interested in, the more opportunities of happiness he has, and the less he is at the mercy of fate, since if he loses one thing he can fall back upon another. Life is too short to be interested in everything, but it is good to be interested in as many things as are necessary to fill our days. (中略)
Any one of these things is interesting if it interests you, and, other things being equal, the man who is interested in any one of them is a man better adapted to the world than the man who is not interested.
- 愛に飢えた人がいる。愛されたいがゆえに必死に気に入られようとする。 しかし周りからは見返りの愛情を求める行為は打算と見透かされて思うように愛されない。 そして報われない思いは更に失望に繋がる。
The man who feels himself unloved may take various attitudes as a result. He may make desperate efforts to win affection, probably by means of exceptional acts of kindness. In this, however, he is very likely to be unsuccessful, since the motive of the kindnesses is easily perceived by their beneficiaries, and human nature is so constructed that it gives affection most readily to those who seem least to demand it. The man, therefore, who endeavours to purchase affection by benevolent actions becomes disillusioned by experience of human ingratitude.
- 仕事は退屈で面白くないもの。 しかし暇なのはもっと辛い。 毎日が日曜日、なんてまったく楽しくない!
Most of the work that most people have to do is not in itself interesting, but even such work has certain great advantages. To begin with, it fills a good many hours of the day without the need of deciding what one shall do. (中略)
Work, therefore, is desirable, first and foremost, as a preventive of boredom, for the boredom that a man feels when he is doing necessary though uninteresting work is as nothing in comparison with the boredom that he feels when he has nothing to do with his days. With this advantage of work another is associated, namely that it makes holidays much more delicious when they come.
- 仕事を面白くする２つの要素。 一つは仕事を通じてスキルがアップしていく場合。 そしてもう一つは、(こっちの方が幸せになるには大事)建設的に何かを作り上げるような場合だ。
Two chief elements make work interesting: first, the exercise of skill, and second, construction. Every man who has acquired some unusual skill enjoys exercising it until it has become a matter of course, or until he can no longer improve himself. (中略)
There is, however, another element possessed by the best work, which is even more important as a source of happiness than is the exercise of skill. This is the element of constructiveness. (中略)
The satisfaction to be derived from success in a great constructive enterprise is one of the most massive that life has to offer, although unfortunately in its highest forms it is only open to men of exceptional ability.
- あなたがクヨクヨしていることなんて、ごまめの歯ぎしり。 自意識過剰。 周りは誰も気にしてないし、関心もない。 世界全体から見たら大したことない。 気にすんなってこった。
All impersonal interests, apart from their importance as relaxation, have various other uses. To begin with, they help a man to retain his sense of proportion. It is very easy to become so absorbed in our own pursuits, our own circle, our own type of work, that we forget how small a part this is of the total of human activity and how many things in the world are entirely unaffected by what we do.
- 「中庸」は退屈な考え方だが、実はこれが大事。 確かに、極端な考え方に振れるのはカッコいい、スカッとするが、それは表層的で不完全で危うい。 デカルトも中庸の大切さを説いていた。 長い間、過去の歴史を経て残ってきた習慣やルールはそれなりの意味があるはず。 良識とはそういうもの。
The golden mean is a case in point: it may be an uninteresting doctrine, but in a very great many matter it is a true one.
ラッセルの名前を最初に知ったのは、「世界五分前仮説」という思考実験の話を聞いたときでした。 我々が生きているこの世界は、過去の記憶の創作も含めて実は五分前にできていたとしてもその仮説が誤りであると証明できない、というものです (B級SF映画によくあるような、自身が培養液につけられた大脳のみの存在になっていたとしても、過去記憶も操作されているので本人には分からない) 。 こんな突拍子もないことを言ったかと思えば、数学論の集大成ともいうべき「Principia Mathematica(数学原理)」 をまとめ上げる、また「ラッセル=アインシュタインの非核宣言」に見られるように、世界を良い方向へ導こうとアクティブに周りに働きかける。 まさに自身の「幸福論」で主張している通り、外界に向けて広いジャンルに興味の幅を広げていった行動の人だなあ、と感じました。
変に気負わずに読者に真っ直ぐに向き合って、語りかけるところが良き良き。
