農本主義、靈性和希望生態詩學：與諾曼．威茲伯(Norman Wirzba)教授對談
諾曼．威茲伯
Norman Wirzba, Distinguished Professor of Theology and Ecology & Senior Fellow of Ethics, Duke University, USA
周序樺
Shiuhhuah Serena Chou, Associate Research Fellow, Institute of European and American Studies, Academia Sinica, Taiwan
責任編輯：黃奕偉 協力：吳寧馨
編按
〈農本主義、靈性和希望生態詩學〉這篇對談是整理自2022年12月8日諾曼．威茲伯（Norman Wirzba）教授與周序樺老師在中研院歐美研究所對話所作的逐字稿。諾曼．威茲伯，目前是美國杜克大學神學特聘教授暨倫理學高級研究員，周序樺，目前是中央研究院歐美研究所副研究員。二位老師的深度對話，在《英美文學評論》第42期（2023年夏）曾以全英文刊出。《複眼重讀：宗教學與人文心理》網誌，基於對宗教學跨領域嘗試的重視，尤其神學與生態學觀點的精彩交織在宗教學領域較為罕見，特別以中英文對照的方式全文刊登，另外以宗教學視角進行前導式的編輯前言，以及內文中相關生態專業學者的編輯註釋與內文標題，希望宗教人文學讀者能夠因此能夠更加快速加入並不熟悉的農業與生態議題的迫切思考與對話。
編輯前言
人文學科如何涉入農業議題？宗教研究又能在當中給出怎麼樣的差異觀點？在正式進入周序樺老師與Norman Wirzba兩位學者的精采對談之前，我們先鋪陳幾個脈絡及癥結，也藉此呈現出宗教研究的可能切入視角。
先從美國農業論述的脈絡談起，周老師曾以「有無相生」編註[i]這個生動描述，來呈現美國農業論述在環保運動中，夾在保育或保存兩陣營之間，兩面不是人的尷尬局面。農業的社會形象因此往往擺盪在開發與守護之間，有機農業透過標舉無為、無毒與自然形象所贏得的社會聲望，實際上就反映了意圖在有/無、保育/保存、開發/保護兩難之中，為農業找出路，但卻也是將農業浪漫化的時代產物。
如果深究農業論述的矛盾擺盪現況，回顧歷史，農業在美國曾經是經濟命脈，更被賦予正直、善良的道德形象。美國第三任總統傑佛遜即曾提到，「那些在大地裡耕作的人是上帝的選民」編註[ii]，以宗教學的觀點來看幾乎可以這麼說–農業曾經在新大陸奠定民主政治基礎，成為新教倫理的具體實踐。但隨著社會脈絡的變遷，清教徒主義的式微，讓勞動的神聖光環不再，農業的論述基礎也隨之被掏空。曾幾何時，透過勞動、妥善管理與使用土地，農業曾經彰顯了神所賦予的管家身分，如今卻既失去清教徒美德加持，又未得到既有環保論述蔭庇，於是，重新為農業、勞動與生產找到足以回應時代要求的意義，就成為這篇對談的根本關切。
不過，這又是一個怎麼樣的時代呢？
從Wirzba在訪談中的回應看來，他所試圖對治的時代議題與消費主義的商品化現象密切相關。接續韋伯對新教倫理的討論，過往基督新教所強調的生產倫理，已搖身一變成為消費倫理，而如此的轉折就與前述農業論述被消解背後的清教徒主義式微有關。參照坎貝爾對韋伯新教倫理的修正，編註[iii]他認為十八世紀之後，編註[iv]新教倫理從理性制慾，轉而偏重浪漫感性，它們同樣關注個人內在的靈魂內省，然而標誌性的情緒從壓抑陰鬱轉為樂觀善感，也因此追求內在滿足的「自我幻覺式的享樂主義」（self-illusory hedonism），就取代清教徒倫理的入世禁慾主義，成為引致商品消費的時代精神。坎貝爾對消費主義的考察所表明的，實際上並非新教倫理的式微，而是新教倫理的內涵轉變。
順著新教倫理內涵轉變這個脈絡來理解勞動意義的問題，我們就能比較清楚Wirzba何以必須通過基督教神學的語彙來對治消費主義世界的商品化現象。作為神學家的Wirzba通過基督教的語言重構世界為一種賜與/禮物，藉此引出人必須善待賜與、讓自己配得所食之物的獨特詮釋，而如此的神學敘事所意圖對治的，不僅是資本主義的鐵籠，抑或消費主義浪漫幻想的城堡（Campbell，2016：196），也更引導我們去思索救贖與盼望，並且重新檢視靈性所應帶來的解放意涵。
[i] 周序樺（2013）。有無相生：美國有機農業論述與農業倫理。出自蔡振興編，生態文學概論，台北，書林，頁221-239。
[ii] 同上，引自周序樺，2013：225。
[iii] Campbell（2016）。浪漫倫理與現代消費主義精神（何承恩譯）。新北市：國家教育研究院。
[iv] 指標性的事件在北美是大覺醒運動，在歐洲則有德國的敬虔派與英國的衛理公會興起。可參考Hofstadter（2018）。美國的反智傳統（陳思賢譯）。新北市：八旗文化。
內文
Serena Chou: Thank you for joining Professor Norman Wirzba and I for today’s interview conversation. My name is Serena Chou and I am an associate research fellow of American literature and environmental humanities at the Institute of European and American Studies, Academia Sinica. We are honored to have Professor Wirzba with us this evening, sharing his thoughts on Agrarianism, Spirituality, and the Ecopoetics of Hope. Professor Wirzba, as many of you might know, is Gilbert T. Rowe Distinguished Professor of Christian Theology and Senior Fellow at the Kenan Institute of Ethics at Duke University. His research and teaching interests are at the intersection of theology, philosophy, ecology, and agrarian and environmental studies. Raised on a farm in Southern Alberta, Professor Wirzba went on to study history at the University of Lethbridge, theology at Yale University Divinity School, and philosophy at Loyola University Chicago. Since then, he has taught at Saint Thomas More College/University of Saskatchewan, Georgetown College in Kentucky, and Duke University Divinity School.
I first learned about Professor Wirzba’s work when I was a graduate student working on American organic farming literature and culture at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. His edited collection The Essential Agrarian Reader: The Future of Culture, Community, and the Land, published in 2004, was one of the few contemporary works published back then on agrarianism as a distinctive American value and school of thought formulated by great thinkers from Thomas Jefferson, the Twelve Southern Agrarians, to Wendell Barry, Wes Jackson, and Vandana Shiva, among others. Since then, Professor Wirzba continues to publish prolifically. Some of his prominent works relevant to today’s conversation include Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating (Cambridge UP, 2011, 2nd Edition 2019), This Sacred Life: Humanity’s Place in a Wounded World (Cambridge UP, 2021), and Agrarian Spirit: Cultivating Faith, Community, and the Land (U of Notre Dame P) published this August. For anyone interested in food, in farming beyond agribusiness, and in environmental ethics and eco-spirituality, you cannot miss the works of Professor Norman Wirzba.
周序樺：我是中央研究院歐美研究所副研究員周序樺，今天感謝各位參與諾曼．威茲伯(Norman Wirzba)教授與我的對談。我們很榮幸邀請到威茲伯教授來分享他對農本主義、靈性和希望生態詩學的見解。威茲伯教授是杜克大學凱南道德研究所(Kenan Institute of Ethic)生態倫理學高級研究員和吉爾伯特‧羅維 (Gilbert T. Rowe) 神學特聘教授。他的研究和教學皆著重於神學、哲學、生態學以及農業和環境研究等領域。威茲伯教授在阿爾伯塔省南部的農場長大，爾後在萊斯布里奇大學(University of Lethbridge)主修歷史、到耶魯大學神學院(Yale University Divinity School)進修神學，並於芝加哥洛約拉大學(Loyola University Chicago)鑽研哲學。他先後在聖托馬斯莫爾學院/薩斯喀徹溫大學、肯塔基州喬治敦學院和杜克大學神學院任教。
我第一次接觸到威茲伯教授的作品是在我就讀洛杉磯南加州大學比較文學所，當時我還是一名研究美國有機農業文學和文化的博士生。他2004年所編輯的著作，《基礎農本讀物：文化、社區和土地的未來》(The Essential Agrarian Reader: The Future of Culture, Community, and the Land)是當時少數相關主題作品之一，當中他將農本主義形塑成一種獨特的美國價值觀和思想流派，並融合湯瑪斯‧傑佛遜（Thomas Jefferson）編註[1]、十二位南方農民（The Twelve Southern Agrarians or The Twelve Southerners）編註[2]，以及溫德爾．巴瑞（Wendell Berry）編註[3]、韋斯．傑克遜（Wes Jackson）編註[4]和萬達娜．希瓦Vandana Shiva）編註[5]等重要思想家們的思維。之後威茲伯教授持續大量發表相關文章。今日對談也將提及其相關著作，包括2011年《食物與信仰：飲食神學》(Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating) 、2021年《神聖的生命：受傷世界中的人性地位》(This Sacred Life: Humanity’s Place in a Wounded World)和今(2022)年8月出版的《農本精神：耕作信仰、社區與土地》(Agrarian Spirit: Cultivating Faith, Community, and the Land)。對食物、農業綜合企業以及環境倫理和生態靈性感興趣的人士，都不能錯過諾曼威茲伯教授的作品。
Norman Wirzba: Thank you for that kind introduction, Serena.
諾曼威茲伯：Serena，謝謝你的介紹。
農本精神的根源之一：逃離
Serena Chou: I would like to begin today’s conversation with your personal experience, that is, where your academic interest in agrarianism comes from. In Agrarian Spirit, you mentioned that you grew up on a farm. Could you share with us what life on a farm was like back then?
周序樺：我想從您的個人經歷開啟今日的對談，也就是您對農本主義的學術興趣從何而來。在《農本精神：耕作信仰、社區和土地》一書中，您提到您是在農場長大的，能和我們分享您當時的農場生活嗎？
Norman Wirzba: Sure. It was a farm in Southern Alberta, and it was a family farm. My forebears were immigrants who came from West Germany to Canada in 1952. They had been farming in Central Europe, but after the war there wasn’t much available land. When they came to Western Canada, they were very excited to start a small family farm. On it we had multiple kinds of animals. We had cattle, chickens, and pigs. We raised grain and alfalfa to feed the animals, and we also had a little bit of pasture land. It was very much a farm that was in the tradition of small-scale husbandry, with close attention to the care of land and animals. I was growing up at a time when so much of the farming that had been done for many generations among people was changing dramatically. After World War II, there was a great effort to industrialize production. What I mean is there was a great amount of pressure to maximize yield; applying a lot of fertilizer and using herbicides, taking animals off the land and keeping them within corral or confined spaces. I was caught in that conflict because the farming that I did with my grandfather was very much in the tradition of a sort of traditional husbandry where the scale was such that if you couldn’t exercise proper care, you were likely to do damage.
And so that was the grandfather’s side of farming, which I was very attracted to. But we were also getting a great deal of pressure from bankers, who, at that point, were already saying that if they were going to continue to support our farming operation, we needed to get our operation a lot bigger. So instead of having 2,000 heads of cattle, we were being told that we would need 20,000 heads of cattle to keep the operation viable. And that was an enormous jump, and it required a much, much larger land base. The financial pressures are enormous because to buy that kind of land requires taking on a tremendous amount of financial debt. Our family was not unusual in that sense because so many other farmers were facing the very same pressure. This is a pressure now that farmers are feeling all around the world, which is that you have to industrialize production, you have to take on tremendous amount of debt to take on agricultural inputs. This was terribly stressful. That kind of farming is not enjoyable because it requires that attention to and care of animals and land be pushed aside.
諾曼威茲伯：我的祖先過往一直在中歐耕種，由於戰後可用的土地減少，於是他們在1952年從西德移民至加拿大，抵達阿爾伯塔省之後發現當地有充沛的土地能打造小型家庭農場時，他們顯得非常興奮。我們的農場非常傳統規模也不大，以照料土地和動物為重，豢養著包括牛、雞、豬等許多動物，同時種植穀物和苜蓿來餵養牲畜。我成長的年代農業經歷了翻天覆地的變化，二戰後政府大力推行工業化生產，農民深感壓力，因為他們被要求盡可能地提高產量，便開始施用大量肥料和除草劑，動物亦被迫關在畜欄或密閉空間中。我和祖父身歷其境，我們的耕作方式依循傳統，倘若不能給予動物適當的照顧，便極可能造成傷害。儘管我對畜牧生活相當著迷，當時家族卻受到來自銀行的巨大壓力。銀行表示我們必須擴大經營規模才能繼續提供支援，我們得將現有的2,000 頭牛增量至20,000 頭牛，一旦牲畜量增加便需要添購更大量的土地，這對我們而言是極為龐大沈重的經濟負擔。不單是我們一家，這是全球農民都面臨的問題，即進入工業化生產，便需承擔巨額的債務以茲生產，且在這樣的情況下便得捨棄對動物和土地的關照，這是農民並不樂見的耕作模式。
Coming into adulthood in the 1980s –– the time when the farm crisis was here– many farmers were losing their farms because of bankruptcy and foreclosure. I was thinking, this is not the kind of life I want. I decided that I was not going to be a farmer, so I pursued the route of teaching instead. I did not realize that, of course, many years later, I would run into Wendell Berry. He convinced me that I need to rethink whether agricultural peoples have something to teach us about the major philosophical and religious questions of our time. As any of you who have been on farms know, agriculture and people who work the land and work with animals think differently about the world than urbanites who do not grow any of their own food and do not raise animals. Wendell really helped me see that I could do work within professional philosophy and theology that brought the insights of farming life to the way we think about larger cultural questions.
1980年代我已成年，當時正值農場危機爆發時期，許多農民因破產和失去抵押品贖回權而無法再持有農場，也令我開始思考這並非我想要的生活。因此我決定放棄農民身份而選擇教職。我當時並沒有想到多年後我會遇到溫德爾貝瑞(Wendell Berry)這位重要的學者，他說服我從當代哲學和宗教重要議題反思農民議題，進而激盪出不同思維。待過農場的人就會知道，曾與土地和動物一起工作的人們，相較於從未種植過自己的食物也不飼養動物的都市人，二者對世界的看法不盡相同。溫德爾確實幫助我透過自身從事的哲學和神學專業來審視如何將農業生活帶入更大的文化議題。
Serena Chou: I like the vocational idea that even though you eventually pursued a different career path, you were not actually running away from the farm. What you fled from were, instead, the forces of agribusinesss, and not traditional husbandry or stewardship.
周序樺：我喜歡您對職涯的見解，即使您最終選擇了不同於農夫的職業道路，實際上也未遠離農場。相反的，您逃離的實則為農業企業的暴力，而非傳統畜牧業或農場管理。
Norman Wirzba: That is very important because I think farming has been a most beautiful way to live. But, historically, it has been very difficult because the economic contexts in which people are being asked to do the work are difficult. And that is when farming becomes very painful as an exercise when you cannot do the work you want to do because of financial pressures.
諾曼威茲伯：我一向認為耕種是最美麗的生活方式。但是從歷史上看來，從事這項工作的人們往往被要求在經濟困難的環境下生存，導致生活相當艱難。當迫於經濟壓力而無法隨心所欲時，務農就變得非常痛苦。
Serena Chou: I am curious what your responsibilities on the farm were as a child.
周序樺：我相當好奇您兒時在農場都負責哪些事務？
Norman Wirzba: Because we were a family farm, we had all sorts of work to do. I was responsible for feeding animals; that meant every day, twice a day, we fed cattle, we fed pigs, we fed chickens. My job was to make sure chickens were in the coup at nighttime so that they didn’t get attacked by coyotes or scooped up by hawks or things of that sort. Another big part of the work was irrigating our land. Southern Alberta is very dry, and so to grow crops we used irrigation. That means using irrigation pipes. You have to move them every six to eight hours, otherwise you will flood the land that they are irrigating. And so that meant getting up at four or five in the morning, changing the pipes, going to work, coming back, changing them midday, and then changing them again before going to bed. It was a lot of demand on the lives of people who were doing this work. At points it is easy to become resentful about it because, unlike my city friends who could do whatever they wanted in their evenings or weekends, we had work to do and it was work that had to be done.
諾曼威茲伯：因為我們是家庭農場，所以必須處理各式各樣的工作。我每天到農場兩次，主要負責餵養動物，包括牛、豬、雞等。我必須確保雞不會在夜間發生被野狼襲擊或被老鷹等抓走等意外。另一個主要的工作是灌溉，阿爾伯塔省南部非常乾燥，因此需使用管道灌溉系統來種植莊稼。管線必須每六到八小時移動一次，否則水就會淹沒土地。我必須每天早上四點或五點起床去移動管道，至中午再去更換，爾後睡覺前再做一次。有許多不得不做的事務，令人時常容易心生不滿，我不像那些住在都市的朋友們，可以在晚上或週末做任何想做的事，我們總是有很多必須完成的工作。
I think this is one of the hardest lessons to try to communicate to people. The animals need care, whether you feel like it or not. So that even if you are ill or feeling terrible yourself, you still have to get out there and feed them. Sometimes we hard cold winters, it was very important for us to put down bedding straw in the corrals. That meant being outside in 20-below weather and spreading fresh straw so that the cattle, when they laid down, would have something softer to lay on and not freeze. There was a kind of attunement to weather. There was an attunement to the seasons. There were the schedules of plants. When you have harvest time coming and the grain is ready, you got to work. You have to bring it in. You can’t go on vacation. When we had hay, which is a very important crop for cattle, you have to cut it and hope it doesn’t rain. Because when it rains, the quality of the hay goes down. You have to bail it quickly and bring it in so that it doesn’t spoil out in the fields. The patterns of work were regular, but they were also varied. There was always the work of building and repairing buildings. There was so much about the work that I just love, especially being outside all the time. But it’s also hard and it doesn’t let up. You cannot just go on vacation because the work doesn’t stop just because you want it to.
這也是很難令人理解的課題之一。無論你是否樂意從事這些工作，動物仍需被照顧。即使你生病或不舒服，仍然必須去餵養牠們。我們得在寒冷的冬天去畜欄裡鋪上墊草，牛隻躺下休息時才不會受凍。你得妥協於天氣、季節和植物的生長時序。當收成季節來臨，你就得犧牲假期。收割餵養家牛的乾草時，也會祈禱老天不要下雨。因為雨水會使得乾草的品質下降。還必須迅速把乾草割好並帶進室內，才不至於爛在田裡。這樣的工作模式雖然規律卻也很多變。除此之外，工作還包括建造與修繕建物。但我非常喜歡這份工作，尤其是可以一直待在外面。不過這確實不容易，也完全無法鬆懈，譬如你便不能隨意去度假，這些工作不會因為想停就停。
農本精神的根源之二：歸鄉
Serena Chou: Thank you for bringing these work issues up. It’s important not to over-romanticize farm life and farm work. Most people nowadays still look at farming or farm life nostalgically, even though it is an everyday mixture of both hardship and joy. Agrarianism, as you briefly define it, means “responsible dwelling” or “a way of life attuned to requirements of land and local communities.” What personal or historic background drove you to edit the collected volume The Essential Agrarian Reader, which is one of the few ethical or theoretical discussions of farming published back in 2003? I am curious because that was one of the few contemporary discussions on agrarianism and farm ethics[6] that I could find back then when I was working on my dissertation. What motivated you back then?
周序樺：感謝您提出這些關於農場工作議題，不過度浪漫化農場生活和農場工作是相當重要的。現在大多數人仍然懷念農耕或農家生活，儘管那是苦樂參半的日常。正如您提出的簡短定義，農本主義意味著「居住義務」或「一種適應土地和當地社區需求的生活方式」。您編纂2003年出版的《基礎農本讀物：文化、社區和土地的未來》背後有什麼個人或歷史因素嗎？我在寫論文時發現這算是為數不多探討農業倫理的著作。您的動力來源是什麼？（您為何想要編輯這本文集？）
Norman Wirzba: A few years previous, I had moved to Kentucky to teach. I asked a friend from Kentucky– who is a Kentucky author that I should read? I would like to learn more about the culture that happens in Kentucky. He said, well, I think you should read Wendell Berry. I had never heard of Wendell Berry and knew nothing about him, so I had not a thought of agriculture in my mind. But I said, okay, I will pick up books by Wendell Berry. Wendell is a poet, he is a story writer, a novelist, but also an essay writer. I picked up some books of his, in all of those genres, and I just loved what I was reading. It was a kind of homecoming to me because all through graduate school, I had completely forgotten about farming.
諾曼威茲伯：在編纂這部著作的幾年前，我搬到肯塔基州任教。為更了解肯塔基州文化，我請一位當地朋友推薦肯塔基州作家的作品來閱讀，他推薦溫德爾．貝瑞。當時我從來沒有聽說過溫德爾，也對他一無所知，也未曾聯想到他的作品會和農業有關。溫德爾是詩人、小說家也是散文作家。我挑選了他的一些書籍來拜讀，自此便完全沈溺其中。對我而言讀他的作品像是回家，在我的整個研究生期間，我早已完全忘記過去務農的種種。
Even though I had grown up doing it, I just thought that was done. I am now moving into another chapter of my life. Then as I started reading Wendell Berry, I started to see that he could put basic questions about human life and about our relationship to the land in really powerful ways, using very important language and concepts that I had not encountered. In my training in theology and philosophy, if you look at universities, at least certainly across the continents that I know, farmers and farming do not show up. They are not on university campuses. They are not teaching. They are not writing the books or the essays that many of our students read. And I thought, this is a serious problem. What I wanted to do at first was simply do a conference, sort of honoring and celebrating Wendell Berry’s work. But when I approached Wendell about doing that, he said “Absolutely not. I have no interest in a conference.”
儘管我從小務農，但對我而言那個階段已然結束，我重新展開生命的另一個篇章。然而，當我開始閱讀溫德爾的作品時，我發現他會透過非常有力的方式，以及我從未見過的重要語言和概念來提出人類生活以及人與土地關係的相關基本問題。在我學習神學和哲學過程中，至少在我所知範圍內的大學，肯定沒有和農民與農業相關的議題。農民不會出現在大學校園裡，不會在此教書，更不會去撰寫給學生閱讀的書籍或論文，我開始體認到這是一個相當嚴重的問題。一開始我想做的只是召開一個研討會來表彰溫德爾的著作。但當我就此向溫德爾提出建議時，他卻表示對研討會完全沒有興趣。
Serena Chou: Not interested in academics or in conferences?
周序樺：他是對學術還是對研討會沒有興趣呢？
Norman Wirzba: Well, in the conference as framed. He said “I’m not interested in that.” So I wrote his editor and said I want to do a conference. I have funding to do a conference and I want to take up Wendell’s work because I think it’s so important across so many academic disciplines. And he said, well, the 25th anniversary of his book The Unsettling of America is coming up. Let’s make the conference about this book and see whether or not the arguments of the book published in 1977 still hold. Wendell agreed to that. So I said, who do you want to have engage you on this very important question about what is the role of agriculture in cultural renewal, in cultural critique? So we put together a list of a number of people like Wes Jackson, Vandana Shiva, David Orr, and some of these people later showed up in The Essential Agrarian Reader.
After the conference, it was very clear to me that what happened there was going to be a benefit to a wider audience. So, I worked with each of the presenters and then also brought in a couple more essays to round out the collection to give it a way of showing that agrarian position. Even though it comes out of agricultural life and is based on the experience of agricultural people, it’s not an argument that is only for farmers. What farmers have to teach us needs to be understood by people in all sorts of walks of life. And so that was really the impetus behind The Essential Agrarian Reader. At that point there, there were not many folks who were trying to make a larger case for the agrarian position in broader cultural terms. We did that book, and then we also started a series called “Culture of the Land” with the University of Kentucky Press in which we got a number of authors to write books that really expand what Agrarianism has to teach us about fine art, or about education, or about literary theory, or variety of other topics. I think the total we did was maybe 15 books or so in that series.
諾曼威茲伯：主要是針對研討會。所以我寫信給溫德爾的編輯說我想出資贊助召開一場研討會，因為我認為他的著作在許多學科中都舉足輕重。他的編輯表示，溫德爾的著作《美國的不安》(The Unsettling of America)即將出版滿 25 週年，或許我們可以以這本書為主題，探討他在 1977 年出版的論點至今是否仍然成立，溫德爾也對此表示同意。我便詢問他想和哪些人一同談討農業作用於文化復興和文化批判此一議題，最後我們列出如 Wes Jackson、Vandana Shiva、David Orr[7]等名單，其中一些人後來也有參與《基礎農本讀物：文化、社區和土地的未來》一書。
研討會結束後，我認為當時的討論應該讓更多人受益。因此我和每位發表人合作，透過撰寫論文來達成目標。這些探討的內容（這次探討的主題）雖源於農耕生活，取材於農人經驗，但並不是針對於農民的獨有論調，農民授予我們的東西需要被各行各業的人理解。這便是《基礎農本讀物：文化、社區和土地的未來》背後的推動力。過去極少人試圖從更廣泛的文化角度為農業地位而努力。除了編撰這本書，我們還與肯塔基大學出版社合作「土地文化」系列書籍，邀請許多作者撰寫，闡述農本主義教予我們在美術、教育、文學理論或者其他各種層面上的議題，共有 15 本書左右。
克服生態健忘症
Serena Chou: It is very important that you mentioned how agrarianism is not just for farmers or country folks but a broader sense of planetary community. I find it fascinating how The Essential Agrarian Reader included many chapters that discuss agrarianism as a mode of life, an ethos, that is important to everyone who wants to live environmentally.
周序樺：非常重要的是，您提到農本主義不僅適用於農民或鄉間居民，也是微型社區的廣義範圍（也適用於整個地球村）。我發現在《基礎農本讀物：文化、社區和土地的未來》一書中，許多章節都將農本主義作為一種生活方式、一種風氣來探討，這對每個關注環保生活的人來說都很重要且迷人。
Norman Wirzba: I think the essential point to be made about agrarians, if you realize it’s not just by or for farmers, is to say that an agrarian is someone who understands that the health and wellbeing of people can’t be understood and addressed apart from the health and wellbeing of the land and all its creatures. Because human beings are ecological beings: we eat, we drink, we breathe, we need energy, and we need to build shelter. All of those things connect us to the land. When we are urbanites or suburbanites, the temptation is to think that we don’t really depend upon land or water or air or so forth. What the agrarian position is trying to do for urbanites is overcome the ecological amnesia that often happens if you shop your way through life, or you simply consume by buying all the things that you need to sustain your life. We can shop for things, but the shopping, again, will eventually draw you back to the land from which these things come. And so for agrarian thinkers, one of the things they try to do is help all people understand how their embodiment draws us into the flesh of the world –– flesh that sources, sustains, nurtures, inspires, and also provokes us. This is whatever we can do to help urbanites have that kind of sensitivity. Maybe even sympathy is going to be important, too. Because my argument is not that we get people back on the land. There is not enough land for that, and a lot of people don’t have the temperament to take care of land. It’s a very difficult and complex task.
諾曼威茲伯：我認為關於農人的基本觀點是，如果你意識到這不僅僅是與他們息息相關的事，也就是說農人應理解人類的健康和福祉和這片土地及其所有生物均脫不了關係。因為人類也是生態動物：我們除了吃、喝、呼吸也需要能量和建造住所，這些事務都將我們與土地緊密聯繫在一起。當我們居住於城市時，很容易誤以為我們並不依賴土地、水或空氣生活。農業人士的立場所試著要做的，是為都市人克服生態健忘症，這時常發生，如果你一輩子都購物，或單靠消費購買維持生活的必需品。我們能夠買東西，但購買，最終會帶我們回到那些東西源生之處。因此，對於農本思想家來說，他們試圖做的其中一件事情就是，幫助所有人理解他們的身體實踐如何帶領我們回到世界的肉身，那是源生、維持、滋養、鼓舞，並且也是喚醒我們的地方。這就是我們能夠協助城市人保持敏感度，或許僅是有同感也很重要。我的論點不是要讓人們回歸土地。現況是目前也尚無足夠的土地，且許多人也並無照顧土地的企圖，導致這成為一項非常困難和繁複的任務。
Serena Chou: I commend how you define agrarianism as basically a form of responsible dwelling or a way of life or embodied ethos attuned to the requirements of land and local communities. In a way, the agrarianism of Thomas Jefferson, the Southern agrarians, and all is about community-making. I am curious how you see yourself in that long tradition of thought, or how you depart from previous forms of American agrarianism?
周序樺：我很讚賞您將農本主義定義為一種負責任的居住形式，一種生活方式，或者與土地和當地社區的要求可以協調一致的身體實踐氛圍。在某種程度上，湯瑪斯‧傑佛遜、南方農民主義者等人物的農本主義都與社群的形成有關。我很好奇您在此傳統思想中如何定位自己，或者您如何跳脫早期美國農本主義框架？
Norman Wirzba: It’s a really good question, and it’s important to raise because the history of agriculture is not a benign history. There is a history that often involves coercive labor, and agricultural communities can sometimes be very close-minded. These are issues that need to be acknowledged. In the American context in particular, it’s impossible to write the history of agriculture without also talking about the history of indentured servitude or the history of slavery. This is something that Thomas Jefferson and certainly the Twelve Southerners did not do a very good job addressing. They thought it was acceptable to raise food, to grow food with the use of enslaved labor. And this is a major question for the agrarian of the future, which is how do you promote good agriculture that does not in some way or another come at the expense of other people: their labor, their health and wellbeing? We know this is very difficult even still today. I do not know how it plays out all around the world, but in America, for instance, much of the agricultural work is done by migrant workers, and these workers are not getting paid a living wage. They are often asked to work in conditions that are dangerous, hot, or toxic, working with a lot of chemicals, for instance. That raises all sorts of questions about what kind of a society we need that can come alongside farmers and honor them so that they get adequately compensated for the food that they grow. I think this is so important an issue to raise. Because if we cannot develop an economy that enables farmers to do the good work that genuinely cares for land and creatures, animals, plants, we are going to continue to bring degradation to the world.
We know that agricultural practices have done a lot to damage planet earth. So we really need to have urbanites and suburbanites commit to economic priorities and policies that make sure farmers can do the good work of care. Because right now, and historically, we have not seen that. Because the returns that farmers get on their work are so meager, they often need to commit to practices they don’t like. Those are major concerns.
諾曼威茲伯：這是一個很好也很重要的問題。農業史並非總是和善，且經常涉及強制勞動，農業社區有時可能非常封閉，我們不應對這些問題不置可否。特別是美國的農業史無法跳脫契約奴役或奴隸制度。當時湯瑪斯‧傑佛遜和十二位南方人未能妥善處理這個議題，他們認為使用奴役來種植食物是可被接受的。對未來的農業工作者而言，這是一個核心議題：如何在不犧牲他人利益，包括勞動、健康和福祉等代價的前提下來促進良好的農業發展？我們都知道即使在今日，這也相當困難。我不確定世界各地的情況如何，但在美國大部分的農業工作都是由移工完成，但這些工人並沒有得到可維持生活品質的工資。他們經常被要求在使用大量化學品這類危險、高溫或有毒的環境下工作。這又引發出許多問題，例如何種社會體制是可以與農民並肩努力又給予尊重，使他們得到合理工作報酬的？我認為這相當重要，如果無法發展出能夠讓農民兼顧關心土地和生物、動物、植物的經濟環境，世界將持續退化。
眾所皆知，農業活動對地球造成極大破壞。因此我們確實需要讓城市居民和郊區居民共同致力發展出能夠確保農民持續守護作物與大自然的經濟政策。然而從古至今這都未曾發生，農民從工作中獲得的回報微乎其微，他們往往被迫屈就於不認同的耕作方式，這些都是重要的問題。
滋養孕育你的地方
Serena Chou: What motivated you, approximately 10 years later, after you went off to talk about food and faith, to revisit farming and the values, philosophies, and theology of growing food? What values are you now emphasizing? I was excited and surprised to find you revisiting agrarianism this summer when Agrarian Spirit came out.
周序樺：距離您最初談論食物與信仰約莫已過10年，是什麼激勵您再次重新審視農業以及耕作的價值觀、哲學和神學？您現今所強調的價值觀為何？我很高興也和驚訝地發現在2022年夏天《農本精神：培養信仰、社區和土地》問世時，您重新審視農本主義。
Norman Wirzba: Well, I think the reason I come back is what I appreciate about agrarian writers: they continually bring us into contact with the most fundamental questions. How are we going to eat? How are we going to build economies that create flourishing, not just for people, but flourishing for land, flourishing for animals? How do we create forms of growing food that do not shrink biodiversity, but maintain or even grow biodiversity? Many of the problems that we are facing on a planetary level, things like climate change, things like food insecurity, things like the migration of peoples, things like the creation of dead zones, the depletion of aquifers. All of these are helping us see in ways that are harder and harder for anybody to ignore, that we are abusing the land that we need to live.
諾曼威茲伯：我認為主因是我想推崇農業作家們：他們不斷地讓我們反思最基本的問題，包括我們要怎麼吃？我們如何建立不僅為人類，也同時為土地和動物帶來繁榮的經濟？我們如何創造既不會減少生物多樣性，又能維持甚至增加生物多樣性的種植方式？全球面臨的諸多議題，包括氣候變遷、食安問題、人口遷移、死亡區（不毛之地）的形成、含水層枯竭等等都讓人們越來越難以忽視，我們其實正在濫用賴以生存的土地。
At the heart of the agrarian position is the conviction that you nurture the places that nurture you; agrarians are these people who have a long set of traditions and wisdom about the practices, the daily practices, that facilitate nurture. We need to listen to and learn from agrarians because I don’t know how this plays out in your part of the world, but in America, when environmentalism began, it was very much informed by a wilderness ethic. Conservation of pristine nature was the big idea and major focus. And they had a history of national parks and so forth. I love nature. I love wilderness. I love even pristine nature. But the places that we call “wilderness” in parks are places where people don’t belong. And what we need to figure out is not how to be better tourists on earth as when we go visit a national park. We need to figure out what forms of labor, what economic policies are we going to need to nurture the land that nurtures us.
Agricultural people all around the world have the long history of working with the land, and we can learn from these histories because some of that working of the land has been a working against the land: that is how we have done very destructive things. But we also have examples of people who are working with the land so that the land becomes more fertile and more diverse. We need to figure out how do we learn from those people, from the histories of mistakes and successes. In a world of so much planetary destruction, we need the practices that are going to help us heal our land and not just keep abusing the land.
農業人士的核心立場是堅信你需滋養孕育你的地方；農人在日常實踐這方面擁有悠久的傳統和智慧，因此我們需要聽取並學習他們的意見。我不清楚各位所在的區域情況，但在美國，環境保護主義興起時受到荒野倫理的影響極大。保護原始自然是一個重要的想法，因而開始有國家公園的歷史等等。我愛大自然也愛荒野，我甚至喜歡最原始的大自然。但我們在公園裡稱之為「荒野」的地方並不屬於人居。其實我們需要弄清楚的不是去國家公園時如何成為稱職的遊客；而是我們應該透過何種勞動形式，什麼樣的經濟政策來培育這片滋養我們的土地。
世界各地的農業人口經年在土地上耕種，我們可以從這些歷史中吸取教訓，因為在土地耕作中，有一部分是極具破壞性的行為；也有一部分是使土地變得更肥沃、更多樣化的做法。我們需要尋思如何從錯誤和成功的歷史經驗中學習，在一個大規模毀滅的世界之中，找出能夠協助治癒土地的做法，而非繼續濫用土地。
世界作為神聖的禮物
Serena Chou: Do you think it would be too bold to say that this history is why you become interested in the theological and spiritual aspects of both food and farming?
周序樺：如果指稱這段歷史是促使您對食物和農業神學和靈性層面感到興趣的原因，是否恰當？
Norman Wirzba: Yes, I think so. I went to Cop 26 in Glasgow last year. I didn’t go to Egypt last month. But what became very clear to me is that in almost every session that I went to — whether concerning food systems, on business, investment support, all sorts of things –at the end of the sessions, almost the universal refrain was “We know how to do this. We don’t have a problem dealing with engineering. We don’t have a problem with the technical know-how that we need.” The real issue is whether or not we have the culture that will want this to happen, and that will support it to happen. That means the questions of climate change and species extinction, for instance, are not technical issues. They are cultural questions. That means we are talking about values and which values we care for.
諾曼威茲伯：我想是的。去年我參加在蘇格蘭格拉斯哥舉辦的聯合國氣候峰會(COP26)，幾乎在每一場關於食品系統、商業、投資支持等議題的會議上，大家普遍的結論都是「我們知道怎麼做，我們在工程和相關技術層面都沒問題。」然而真正的問題應該是，我們是否真的願意讓事情如此發生，或支持如此造成這些發生的文化。這也意味著氣候變遷和物種滅絕等並非技術問題，而是文化議題，這正是我們所關心的價值觀。
I think what we do not appreciate well enough is how the modern world and the core commitments of modernity require appropriation, mining, commodification, turning things into saleable items. I think what people are realizing is that this is a very destructive way for human beings to think about their place in the world. It is a system that depended and continues to depend on the threat and use of violent force. This whole way of imagining the world and living within it certainly goes against the great spiritual traditions that we know from people all around the world because many cultures will say, the world does not just consist of commodities. The world consists of beings that are alive. They have value, and we can even speak of them as kin. Now, that whole way of speaking presupposes that the world is in some way sacred, and it implies that the whole of the world is a membership of gifts.
我認為我們沒有充分理解的是，現代世界和現代性的核心承諾如何透過挪用、開發、商品化將事物變成可銷售的物品。我認為人們已意識到這對人類思考自身在世界上的定位而言，是相當具破壞性的方式，這是持續依賴暴力威脅的一種制度。這種想像的思維方式違背世界各地的文化傳統，我們必須了解這個世界不僅是由商品，而是由活著的生物組成。他們具有價值，我們甚至可以將他們視之為親人。現今，這整個說法的前提是世界在某種程度上是神聖的，它暗示整個世界都是我們所獲贈的禮物的一部份。
That language of gift is so different from the language of commodity. Because gifts, you have to receive them differently. You do not grasp and take and hoard gifts. Gifts are things that you receive gratefully and then share. And the question I think going forward is whether or not we are going to be able to challenge the kind of commodification that is going all around the world today: privatizing land, putting patents on plants and animal forms all with the aim of maximizing profit for shareholders of companies, or in some instances, maximizing profits for very wealthy individuals and investors who now have a stake in trying to control the world’s food system. People can live without a lot of things. They can maybe even learn to live without oil. But they cannot learn to live without food. One of the things I worry about is the commodification of life forms –– not just the commodification of land. The commodification of life forms is going to present a major challenge to whether or not human beings have the fortitude to recognize that there is something like a violation of life that happens when we commodify life. I am talking not just about human lives, but obviously about animal and plant lives as well. And for that, we are going to need to be able to draw on the great spiritual and religious traditions of the world. Those are the places, those are the traditions where we have texts and histories and memory that still call forth a radically different way of understanding the kind of world we are in. So just the language that we live in, a world that has been created, that there is a creator who believes that what is made is good, that is already quite a departure from a kind of mining attitude that when encountering a place says, how can I profit from it.
禮物與商品的詮釋截然不同。並非以掠奪、竊取以及囤積的方式，你必須以接受的方式獲得禮物。它是你感激地收下然後再分享的東西。我認為未來將面臨的問題是，我們是否能夠挑戰當今世界各式的商品化制度：如土地私有化以及為植物和動物申請專利，這些行徑只德公司股東利潤最大化，並且圖利現在試圖控制世界糧食系統的富人和投資者們的制度。人們可以在物資缺乏的情況下生活，但是人類卻無法沒有食物。我擔心的是各種生命形式的商品化—不僅僅是土地商品化。生命的商品化將挑戰人類是否足夠剛毅去認知到，當我們將生命商品化時，也同時會侵犯生命。我涵蓋的範圍不只是人類，也包括動植物。為此，我們需要能夠借鑒世界上偉大的靈性和宗教傳統。那是我們留下文字紀錄、歷史和記憶之處，它們仍然可喚起一種完全不同的方式來理解我們所處的世界。所以生活在這樣的語言（語境）之中，世界被創造出來，在這當中有位造物主相信所造的一切都美好，如此已經相當程度的遠離那種只想著如何從中獲利的開發態度。
Serena Chou: You mentioned the importance of language or narratives. That is something very important to us working as literary or humanities scholars. In a way, our work is about what kind of narratives can change behaviors and mobilize people to care and act differently in their world-making practices. Now I want to turn to your research on food and theology. In Food and Faith, you note that “we do not really understand food until we perceive, receive, and taste it in terms of its origin and end in God as one who provides for, communes with, and ultimately reconciles creation.” I think this relates to your comment that nature should not be understood as a form of commodity but as a gift. We should try to understand nature as a gift that is given to us, something that we should respect and value. You began writing about farming in 2005 and came back to revisit agrarianism ten years later. You wrote several books on food in between. I am curious if you make a distinction between the eating and the growing of food. I often found myself caught up in this academic identity crisis. More often than not, I am labeled as a scholarof ‘critical food studies.’ I am not very comfortable with this categorization, even though my research relates to food. Could you talk about this? What made you come back to the production of food? Do you share this anxiety? For me, growing food is very different from just eating it.
周序樺：關於您提及的語言或敘事的重要性，對人文學者來說至關重要，某種程度上，我們的工作就是探索哪些敘事可以改變行為，並且促使人們在他們創造世界的實踐中可以有些不同的關懷與行動。接著想探討您對食物和神學的研究，在《食物與信仰：飲食神學》一書中，您指出「直到我們感知、接受和品嚐到食物的源頭和終點時，才真正理解食物，因為上帝是提供、交流並最終調和創造者。」我認為這與您剛提及的論點有關，即大自然不應被理解為一種商品形式，而應被認知為「禮物」。我們應試圖將自然理解為上帝賜予我們的禮物，並尊重和珍視它。您自 2005年起開始撰寫關於農業的著作，歷經十多年後又回來重新審視，期間您也撰寫幾本關於食物的書，很好奇您是否認為食物在食用和種植的定義層面有所區別？我本身經常陷入此一學術認同危機。通常我會被貼上「批判食物研究」學者的標籤，儘管我的研究確實與食物相關，但其實我並不大認同此分類，您的觀點為何？是什麼讓您多年後再次回頭審視食物生產議題？您是否也有和我相同的焦慮？畢竟於我而言，種植食物與僅僅食用食物差異甚鉅。
Norman Wirzba: That is a great question, Serena. There are several things I would want to mention here. On the one hand, it needs to be understood that most of today’s eaters, in so far as they shop to purchase their food, are the most ignorant eaters in the history of the world because they live by what Wendell Berry calls “the superstition” that money produces food. If you have money, you will have food. That is a complete deception because you cannot eat money. What produces food are earth, soil, bacteria, microorganisms. Living in the soil, water, you have plants, you need root systems, you need pollinators, you need bees, you need butterflies. The minute that you pick up any food item and try to understand the story of that food coming to be, you are immediately drawn into a bewildering array of places, creatures, and ecological processes. No photosynthesis, no food, right? No pollinators, no food. No rain, no food, right? All of these things are absolutely crucial to your understanding of any item of food. And we fool ourselves if we think that because we have a product, a package of spaghetti or a package of rice, or a package of apples or what you have. We think that the food is the package when, in fact, anybody who has been involved in growing food knows that the food is a story that takes you back in time into a bewildering array of creatures who came together to make that food possible.
One of the reasons I was writing Food and Faith is because I thought so many people, because they are urbanites, don’t understand the much more complex history of food. Now, that is just the ecological side. Then you also have historical, social, and political sides. Because you have to have people who realize that if you take grain, you can make flour. And if you add yeast and water and a little bit of salt, you can make bread. That is just one example. You have got a history of cooking traditions that require a lot of creativity and inventiveness. Then you have got food economies, the distribution systems. Why wheat instead of rice? Or why a vegetarian versus a meat diet? Why do we have these different ways that people eat? And you have ethnic traditions, so you have a bewildering array of social, cultural factors that also play into the very particular kinds of food that you eat. In the United States, for instance, we are a country obsessed with fast food. We have all these burger joints, chicken joints, you name it. Well, that’s also a cultural phenomenon that was created in 1950s and the 1960s to achieve particular kinds of cultural, but also financial aims. So here, just saying these brief things about ecology and culture, we understand that a hamburger is a very, very complex thing. So that is cultural, that is ecological.
But now what about the spiritual? Well, this is where I had this point that this quote that you gave about understanding things in terms of their source and their reference in God, a creator.
諾曼威茲伯：這是一個很好的問題。在此我想提出幾個觀點，一般食客多半以「無知」的方式透過採購獲取食物，正如同溫德爾．貝瑞所說的他們「迷信」食物係由錢產生。即如果有錢就能有食物，但這完全是一種自我欺騙，因為錢無法被食用。食物生產係透過泥土、土壤、細菌、微生物等物質。食物成長在土壤、水中，需要根系和蜜蜂及蝴蝶等授粉者。當你試圖了解任何食物形成的故事時，也正涉入繁複的生物與生態過程中。若沒有光合作用便沒有食物；若沒有授粉者，沒有下雨，就沒有食物；上述對了解任何食物都至關重要。我們很容易自欺欺人，認為因為擁有了食物產品，如一包意大利面、一包米、一袋蘋果或其他物品就認為食物等同於其包裝。事實上，任何參與食物種植過程的人都明白，食物有一個自己的故事，這個故事帶你回到過去，了解食物如何透過繁複的生物聚集而得以可能。
我撰寫《食物與信仰：飲食神學》的原因之一，是因為我認為許多城市居民並不了解食物繁複的歷史。這不只是關乎生態，也和歷史、社會和政治。人們必須意識到，如果拿到穀物，就可以做麵粉；再加入酵母、水和少許鹽，就可以製作麵包，這只是一個例子。人們擁有需要大量創意來成就烹飪的傳統歷史，才會造就食品經濟和分配體系。例如為何選用小麥而非大米？或者為何吃素而非吃肉？為什麼全球飲食方式如此迥異？都是值得探索的議題。
人們承襲族裔傳統，飲食習慣因而受到各種繁雜的社會、文化因素影響。例如美國著迷於速食，有五花八門的漢堡炸雞店，這實則為 1950 至 60 年代為實現特定文化和財務目標而創造出的文化現象。若是以生態和文化層面做剖析，便能理解「漢堡」一物其實相當複雜，和文化及生態都有關係。那麼在靈性層面又該如何闡述呢？回應你剛所引述的這句話，從起源，及以造物主為參照點的角度來理解事物。
Norman Wirzba: The reason that is important is that food, if it’s not just a commodity, but it reflects this complex ecological cultural history, is ultimately a gift. And it’s not just a gift, but it’s the expression of a giver’s love for you. I start by telling people that this is something that is fairly commonly experienced by people. When you get invited to somebody’s home for dinner, and they bring the food to the table, they will say, “here is food I made for you.” And you, as the one receiving the food, you see that this food that is prepared for you is an expression of their love for you. Food in effect is a declaration of our love for our world and a creator’s “love” for us, and our love for each other, which is why in so many cultures, the sharing of food is essential to that culture’s wellbeing. Hospitality is something that is so important in these diverse cultures because they start with the assumption that we all live by receiving gifts. And these gifts, they are not just laying around. These gifts are given. So what does that do to the way we think about the world? If we think that we have an obligation to share food with each other as a way of, first of all, expressing the creator’s love for a world, then our participation in that kind of sacred hospitality is essential. Hence, in so many indigenous and also spiritual traditions, having people who are hungry is a moral wrong. Because when we deprive people of food, we deprive them of life. And if the world as created teaches us anything, it starts with the assumption that life is good. If we are not promoting that in the ways we live with each other, and don’t share food with each other, we are actually working against the very power of life, the very notion that life is precious. We need to nurture life if we want to be worthy of eating it.
諾曼威茲伯：倘若食物不僅是商品，而反應複雜的生態文化歷史，那麼最終可將其視為禮物，更甚者，是送禮者對愛的表現。舉一個常見的例子，當你被邀請去某人家吃飯，他們把食物端上餐桌時會說「這是我為你做的食物。」而你作為接受者，看到主人為你準備的食物便是其愛的表現。食物便是我們對世界的愛、造物主對我們的愛，以及我們對彼此愛的宣言。這就是為何在眾多文化中，分享食物對文化福祉至關重要。好客非常重要，前提是假設我們都以接受禮物為生。而這些禮物並非隨手可得，而是他人給予的。這對我們看待世界的方式有何影響？若我們為了表達造物主對世界的愛，便有義務彼此分享食物，如此神聖的款待不可或缺。因此，在眾多本土和靈性的傳統中，讓人飢餓是種道德錯誤。當我們剝奪人們的食物時等於剝奪了他們的生命。神創造的世界即是從生活是美好的假設開始教導我們。若我們不倡導彼此共存共榮，不分享食物，那便是在反對生命的力量和否定其珍貴之處。如果我們想使享用食物有意義，就需要滋養其生命。
Serena Chou: Contemporary Taiwan is more or less a secular society. Those who are religious are mostly Buddhists or Taoists. In Food and Faith and Agrarian Spirit, you ask questions such as “Why did God create a world in which every living creature must eat?” Through themes such as gardening and what you call “death and sacrifice; the significance of the Eucharist and the work of reconciliation; the meaning of thanksgiving and self-offering; and the hope of heaven,” you argue that farming and eating are spiritual practices. Could you tell the audience who might be unfamiliar with your works more about what this means?
周序樺：當代台灣多少算是世俗社會，大多人信仰佛教或道教。[8]在《食物與信仰：飲食神學》和《農本精神：耕作信仰、社區和土地》兩本著作中，您提出諸如「因何上帝創造了一個每個生物都必須進食的世界？」此類問題。通過如園藝和您所闡述的「死亡與犧牲；聖體聖事與和解的意義；感恩和自我奉獻的意義；和天堂與希望」等主題，您視耕種和飲食為一種靈性實踐。您能分享更多關於這些意涵嗎？
Norman Wirzba: Yes. I think Christian belief is rooted in an experience that is not just known by Christian, it is known by everybody. When you sit down at a table and you have your plate of food, the thing you have to attend to– and this can be terrifying– is that for you to eat, others have to die. If you are only shopping for food, it is pretty easy to ignore that and forget that. Because when you go buy your meat or your produce, there is no blood, there is no fur, no feathers. There is no history of killing bugs or rodents that wanted to eat your vegetable patch or what have you. All of that is erased. And you think that the food is just there. And you don’t understand that this world in which we live can only live by eating. Every creature that lives eats, and what it eats is other living creatures. The question then, if you are a responsible or even attentive eater, is how do you become worthy of consuming another living being? Which is what we do. So the exercise of thanksgiving –– saying grace before a meal for instance, is an exercise in which you can register the seriousness of what is happening.
諾曼威茲伯：我認為基督教信仰植根於一種體驗，這種體驗不僅為基督徒所知，而是所有人。當你坐在一張桌子旁，拿著盤子裡的食物時，必須留意到聽起來有些可怕的一點：為了你用餐，其他生物必須死去。倘若你只是購買食物，很容易忽略並忘記這點。購買肉或農產品時，並不會看見血，皮毛和羽毛，甚至菜蟲被滅絕的歷史彷彿已不復存在，因為這些過程在上架前都已被刪除。人們認為食物就在那裡，但需要明白的是我們生活的世界只能靠吃來生存。每一個活著的生物都必須進食，吃的即是其他生物。接踵而來的問題是，如果你是一個負責任，甚至是細心的食客，該如何使自己值得另一個生物為自己犧牲呢？這便是我們在做的。如飯前謝恩的操練便標示出此事的嚴肅性。
I remember sometimes when we have had guests and they do not know anything about farming, if we are serving meat, I will say thank you for the life of the chicken that was killed so that we could eat it. And the people will then say, I do not want to eat chicken now. And I want to say, well, where did you think the chicken came from? It was a living being. When you come to the realization that for us to eat, others have to die, you now have to ask the question about how do we become worthy of another’s death? And within a sort of Christian imagination, the answer is simple, even though it is very hard. If you are going to eat another’s life, you have to honor it in its life. That means taking care of it, not abusing its life, not minimizing the significance of its life.
每當我接待對農業一無所知的訪客用餐時，若有提供肉，我便會在供餐時說「謝謝雞為我們奉獻生命以利我們享用。」人們便會說，我現在不想吃雞肉了。我想說的是，你認為雞肉從哪裡來？其實它就是一個生命體，當你意識到為了讓人們有食物可吃其他生物便必須死時，便不得不問，我們該如何配得上他者的死亡？在基督教的想像中，儘管難以做到但答案其實很簡單。若要享用他者的生命，就必須尊重它。即意味著好好照顧它，而非濫用和貶低生命的重要性。
An example that I often give is, growing up on our farm, we raised chickens because we ate chickens. And my grandfather, who was instrumental in helping me understand this, said that if we are going to eat chickens, we have to make sure that the life of the chickens is happy. So he never tolerated abuse of any animals. Our chickens, though they could run anywhere on the farm that they wanted to, my grandfather maintained it was important to cut grass and bring it to them, even though they could find their own grass. He did it every day because it made the chickens happy to receive the grass. My grandfather believed that if you are going to eat the chickens, you have to honor their life by securing as much chicken happiness as you can. And for farmers, this is not a far-fetched way of thinking that you can say that you can treat your land with respect and honor. And when you do that, you are right to eat from the land, or that if you are going to eat meat, the animal whose meat you are eating has to have been treated well. This is something that is completely gone from industrial production.
在我的農場經歷中我們養雞是因為自家要吃。我的祖父教導我若要食用雞，就必須確保牠的生活幸福，所以絕不容忍任何虐待動物的行為。我們養的雞群可以在農場自由活動覓食，但我的祖父仍堅持每天割草並餵食牠們，因為這會令雞愉悅。他認為若要吃雞，就必須盡可能讓牠們活得快樂，以此來紀念其生命。若你要吃肉，該動物肉源必須得到妥善對待，對農民而言這並非牽強附會的想法，而是尊重土地的方式。而這是農業工業生產方式十分缺乏的思維。
Industrial production does not honor or adequately care for any chicken, any cow, any pig, any field. It is a system of abuse of the land because they are all reduced to units of production that need to be raised as efficiently as possible. We have genetically modified animals to make them get to slaughter weight much faster than they ordinarily would. We have genetically modified them so that they will produce more of the kind of meat we want. So we have chickens that have enormous breasts because Americans want white meat. I mean, we are treating living beings as if they are dead. We are treating them like machines. And it is no accident that once we are prepared to treat animals like machines that we can manipulate, modify, speed up –– that we are going to do that to people too. And we are doing that to agricultural workers. We are treating the human bodies that eat the food as basically receptacles that we want to get as much into them as possible. It is a system of degradation that carries on all the way through. We need to recover some sort of a sacramental spiritual understanding because otherwise all of life becomes vulnerable to mining, to resource extraction. That is a pretty frightful world to live in.
在工業生產中並不會尊重和充分照顧雞、牛、豬或農地。為求盡可能有效地提高產量，農事在此一濫用土地的制度中已被簡化。人們對動物進行基因改造，使牠們比平時更快達到屠宰體重，以生產出更多肉量。因為美國人偏愛雞胸肉，胸部巨大的雞應運而生，我們對待眾生就像對待死人或機器一般。可想而知，一旦我們像對待機器一樣對待動物，便能夠進一步操縱、修改、加速牠們，甚至有一天我們也會如此對待人類，誠如現在農民所遭遇的。我們將人體視為容器並追求吃得越多越好，而這將一路通往墮落的體系。我們需要恢
聖禮的靈性理解，否則所有生命都容易受到資源開發與竊取的影響。我們所處在一個相當可怕的世界。
Serena Chou: Thank you for bringing this up. I am also writing about how the transpacific production and consumption of food and other everyday practices can be tactics that we adopt to participate and engage with the world in more sustainable and ecologically just ways. Why do you think it is important to call attention to spiritual, rather than just ethical aspects of farming or eating since spirituality is often associated with conservatism and hegemonic practices. Spirituality is often associated with conservatism or what at times are called political rednecks. I was wondering if you can talk more about this.
周序樺：謝謝您提出這點。我正在研究關於跨太平洋的食品生產和消費行為，以及如何將日常實踐轉化為可永續和正義的參與策略。為什麼您認為在農業或飲食的道德之外，引起人們對靈性的關注也相當重要？靈性通常與保守主義或霸權相關，有時也被稱為政治鄉巴佬，不知道您是否可以多談談這部分？
Norman Wirzba: To say that the world that we consume is not just a commodity, but a place of the gift, that is a revolutionary way of speaking. Because what it does is it says that the dominant sort of economic models, which are all geared toward maximization of profit for shareholders, that’s the wrong approach. When you are saying that in a continuously growing economy the emphasis is all on maximizing GDP, when you say that should not be the goal in life, that is revolutionary. It is not like you are saying that it’s a conservative movement. It’s actually the people who want to keep the status quo, who are the conservative ones, because they are not paying attention to the fact that if we continue doing as we are doing, we are going to run out of water, we are going to continue to degrade land so that fertility will continue to decrease rather than increase. We will continue to destroy diversity of plant and animal life. We will continue to eliminate pollinator species and degrade microbial systems.
諾曼威茲伯：宣稱我們所處的世界中消費不僅僅是一種商品，而是一種饋贈和禮物是相當具革命性。因為它所指涉的是主導地位的經濟模式，即為了股東利潤最大化是錯誤的。當一個持續增長的經濟體將重點全部聚焦在GDP 最大化時，你卻主張這不應該是我們的生活目標時，便是相當具革命性的言論。這並非一場保守運動。想要保持現狀的人是保守派，那是因為他們尚未意識到如果行為依舊不改變，就會耗盡水，使土地退化，導致生育率持續下降，並消除傳粉物種並弱化微生物系統，破壞植物和動物生命的多樣性。
To talk about the world as worthy of cherishing is the most radical political action possible because it puts a spike in the wheel that is driving the world over the edge, over the cliff. It takes tremendous courage, I think, to stand in the face of the commodification of the world and say, we’re not going to tolerate further commodification because we know where that’s going and where it’s going is the reduction of all life to some person’s cost benefit analysis sheet. And I don’t want to be on somebody’s cost-benefit analysis sheet. The spirituality that interests me isn’t naively pious. It asks the practical and economic question: how do we learn to love and cherish and nurture the places that nurture us? How do we learn to love and celebrate and nurture the plant and animal creatures, and the agricultural workers? Those become revolutionary acts because they upend the economic political order that we see as doing so much damage in the world. What we have learned from historians is that most of the great revolutionary movements start around the question of land. Who owns the land? Who gets to say what happens on the land? And in so far as there have been people who’ve said, we want to take the land out of the hands of the elites and the powerful people, those have been the origins of revolutionary movements. I guess I would say that far from being a conservative gesture, it’s actually the much more radical gesture to say that you need to protect life rather than just continue to abuse it.
談論如何珍惜世界其實是最激進的政治行動，因為它像是在為驅使世界衝向懸崖的車輪加上釘子。面對世界的商品化之際，要表態不會容忍此過程更進一步需要甚大的勇氣，因為我們知道它的發展方向是將所有生命化約成生命成本效益分析表，但我並不想出現在他人的分析表上。我感興趣的靈性並非只是一種天真的虔誠，它涉及實際和經濟層面的問題：我們如何學會愛護、珍惜和滋養孕育我們的所在？我們如何學會熱愛、培育和表揚動植物與農人？這些皆是革命性的行為，它們顛覆了在世上造成如此巨大破壞的經濟政治秩序。歷史學家教導我們，大多數偉大的革命運動都是圍繞著土地問題展開的，例如誰擁有土地，何者能定論土地上發生之事等等。曾有人說，革命運動的起源多半來自想從菁英和有權勢的人手中奪走土地。對我而言，表態需要保護生命而不是繼續濫用遠非保守，而是更為激進的姿態。
Serena Chou: Thank you for these historical and cultural contextualizations. The way I see it, as a literary humanities scholar, is that they are not just stories about the land but also about what politics, resistance, and demonstrations could be. One does not need to participate in street demonstrations and throw rocks to be radical. Caring for the land or eating and growing food properly is also political. In this embodied sense of material-spiritual ethos, I am arguing for an entirely different understanding of politics and demonstrations, too.
周序樺：感謝您提供這些歷史和文化脈絡。作為一名人文學者，我的看法是，這些不僅關乎土地，也可能涉及政治、抵抗和示威。激進不僅止於參加街頭示威和扔石頭，愛護土地或正確飲食和種植食物也屬於政治的一環。在物質-靈性氛圍的體現意義上，我也主張政治和示威完全不同。
Norman Wirzba: I think that is really well put. I have had multiple experiences where I have had students in class and we read agrarian writers: they are very attracted to what these agrarians are saying because they help put students in touch with fundamental realities about health, wellbeing, and life’s purpose and such. Some of them will go and spend a summer maybe working on a farm and actually doing the work, not just reading about the work. They tell me that they had no idea how they would be transformed by the work because you are not just thinking your way into another world, you are feeling your way into another world in the most physiological sort of way. You begin to see that the priorities in your life change.
If you are thinking about radical politics, “radical” means in the original sense, taking you back to the root. Radical politics ought to be able to say what is fundamentally important and what do we need to make our commitments to. Agricultural people have a powerful way of telling us that our political and economic priorities are fundamentally distorted. We need to have a vastly different set of priorities that is revolutionary again. Because we are now saying the whole manner of our making sense of this world, the whole manner by which we judge what a good and successful life, these are wrong. They are misguided because they do not understand what is most important. What is most important is not your bank account, how big your house is. What is most important is the health of your soil, the quality and cleanliness of your water, the breathability of your air, the abundance of diverse species of life. These are the most important things because without these no human being can live well or for long. People can live in a smaller house, but they cannot live without good soil.
諾曼威茲伯：我認為你說得很好。我有過幾次經驗，課堂上我讓學生們閱讀農業作家的作品：學生們對這些他們所說的話非常感興趣，他們確實幫助學生了解關於健康、幸福和生活目的等基本現實面。我有些學生除了閱讀相關資訊外，還會花上一整個夏天的時間待在農場。他們告訴我他們從未想過這些作品會如此改變他們，他們不再以自己的認知想像另一個世界，而是透過身體力行的方式進入那個世界。你生活中所在乎的種種，優先順序開始發生變化。
如果你在思考基進政治，「基進」一詞在最初意味著，帶你回到根源。激進政治應該能夠說明根基的重要性，以及我們需要因何做出承諾。農民用一種強而有力的方式告訴我們，現今的政治和經濟優先順序從根本上就被扭曲了。我們需要有一套截然不同且具革命性的優先順序。因為我們現在所認知的世界秩序以及我們評斷美好和成功生活的整套模式都是錯誤的。人們因此被誤導，不明白什麼是最重要的。銀行賬戶和房子有多大並不重要；土壤的健康、水的質量和清潔程度、空氣的通透性以及豐富多樣的生命才是最重要的。失去這些，沒有人可以活得很好或很長壽。人可以住在小房子裡，但不能不依靠好的土壤生活。
Serena Chou: We are talking about action, the ethos of embodied practices, and also labor here. These are things that agrarians support. I like how we are talking about agrarianism as a form of being embedded in the land. Agrarianism is not just about farming. It involves different kinds of actions and dwelling on earth, including what the Pope Francis argues for in the 2015 Encyclical Laudato SI’: Care for Our Common Home as “ecological conversions.” In Be Always Converting, Be Always Converted, Professor Rob Wilson also sees conversion as a form of “self-making and the transformative reaches of poesis” –– “the revolutionary possibility that the everyday self of drifting confusion, ideological bewilderment, or suspended commitment can be made anew.” I personally am fascinated by how farming and gardening have that capability of creating a kind of ecological conversion.
周序樺：我們談論的是行動，具體實踐的精神以及勞動，這些是農本思想家所支持的。我讚賞將農耕主義作為一種植根於土地的形式來進行探討。農本主義不僅是農業，它亦涉及不同種類的行動並關乎地球存亡，像是方濟各教宗(Pope Francis)在 2015 年的通諭《願祢受讚頌》(Encyclical Laudato SI’: Care for Our Common Home)中所主張的「生態皈依」。也如同威雷伯(Rob Wilson)教授在 Be Always Converting, Be Always Converted 中，將皈依視為一種「自我創生與詩意轉化」的形式—「一種革命性的可能性，即我可以重製漂流、意識形態的困惑或懸而未決的承諾。」我個人相當著迷於農業和園藝能夠創造生態皈依的能力。
Norman Wirzba: Yes, it is a really important point. I will just give you an example that is from an indigenous author. Robin Kimmerer says that when Europeans came to North America, their intent was to turn the land into property and to make money from it. They came to search for gold, they came to search for wealth, and so they could never take care of the land. They could only commodify it. Indigenous people, of course, were deeply puzzled and concerned and worried about this whole approach because wherever these European conquerors came, they had no desire to stay. They had no desire to nurture. They wanted to only take and make money. And she said, what happens when you only commodify the land is that you cannot experience the land as the source of your nurture and wellbeing. You cannot honor the land and in honoring the land, find that the land loves you back. Kimmerer says this very important thing: when people do not feel that they are loved, or when people do not feel that they belong where they are, there is going to be a lot of psychic disturbance that happens. Because at root, people want to feel that they belong and they matter. But how can people feel that they belong and matter if the places that nurture them have been degraded and destroyed, or have been objectified and commodified? It is not an accident that a lot of people are feeling a tremendous amount of loneliness and feeling a lot of meaninglessness because they have evacuated the world of meaning and value by saying it is just stuff. It is just commodities. If the world that makes our living possible is just a bunch of commodities, how do we know we are not just a bunch of commodities too that can be sold to the highest bitter?
諾曼威茲伯：這是非常重要的一點。本地作家羅賓・基默爾(Robin Kimmerer)表示，當歐洲人來到北美時，他們的目的是將土地變成財產並從中賺錢。他們以淘金為目的，所以永遠也顧不上這片土地，只能將其商品化。然而原住民對這整個做法深感困惑和擔憂，無論這些歐洲征服者去到何處，他們都不想留下來。他們沒有養育土地的想法，只想賺錢。當人們只將土地商品化時，將無法感受到土地是滋養和幸福人類的源泉。在尊重土地的同時，你會發現土地也同等愛你。基默爾闡述一件非常重要的事情：當人們感覺不到被愛，或者感受不到所在所屬之處時，便會產生許多心理障礙，因人類本質上便需要歸屬感和重要感（被認同）。倘若培育人們的地方已經被降格和破壞，或者已被物化和商品化，人們怎麼會感受到歸屬感和重要呢？當代許多人感受到的巨大孤獨感和無意義感並非偶然，係因他們將上述種種視為商品，從而掏空了世界的意義和價值。如果讓我們賴以生存的世界僅只是一堆商品，我們是否也僅是一堆可以賣到最高價的商品？
I think people are recognizing how this modern movement to appropriate, commodify, and exploit has been a disastrous move. Because it is now said, when we commodify, appropriate, and exploit land or creatures, we are going to have to do it to all the people in the end, too. Then you are left with who is the best exploiter, meaning who is the wealthiest or the most powerful or violent? We know historically that you need to have a certain amount of money to live a decent life, but at a certain point, the money doesn’t make you happier, it makes you more miserable. I think people are wanting to return to questions about what is going to make their life meaningful? What is going to affirm my life as valuable? I think it has to be connected to the question about how we form the value of land and the creatures we live with. My argument is that we can only think about human life as sacred and worthy of cherishing unless we also, at the same time, think of all the life and the places that nurture us as being sacred and worthy of cherishing.
我認為人們已經意識到現代這種挪用、商品化和剝削的潮流是災難性的行為。當我們商品化、佔用和開發土地或生物時，我們最終也不得不對所有人這樣做。最終只會落得爭論誰是最好的剝削者，即是說最富有、最有權勢或最暴力的為何人。從歷史上可得知需要有足夠的錢才能過上體面的生活，但在某些時候金錢並不會使你更快樂，只會讓你更痛苦。我認為人們實則想要回歸去探究何者會令生活有意義，何者能肯定生命的價值。這些皆須與人們如何形成土地和生物價值等問題串連起來。我的論點是，除非我們皆認同所有生命和滋養我們的所在都是神聖的、值得珍惜的，人類的生命才有同等價值。
Serena Chou: I like how you are emphasizing farming and eating as spiritual practices we can work on: this not only empowers us, as urbanites, but also gives us hope or something to work towards. I find it valuable how you provided agrarian spiritual exercises in the last part of your book, Agrarian Spirit, for your readers. You offered tactics that people can actually work on, such as learning to pray, to see properly, to be decent, learning about the meaning of humility, generosity, and hope. The world often seems pretty bleak right now. Can tell us how you stay hopeful, what hope is to you, and why hope is needed? What are the conditions and practices of hope as you see them?
周序樺：我喜歡您強調農業和飲食是人們可以從事的靈性實踐方式，這不僅賦予我們作為城市居民的力量，同時亦指引了應該為之努力的方向。您在《農本精神：耕作信仰、社區和土地》一書最後為讀者提供的農本精神實踐方式很有價值，例如學習如何祈禱、正確看待事物、保持正派，並學習謙遜、慷慨和希望的意義。現在的世界似乎貌似慘淡，您是如何保持希望的？希望的意義為何？在您看來何謂「希望」，又該如何實踐？
Norman Wirzba: Because I speak about agricultural and environmental issues, the news on so many fronts are exactly as you say, very bleak. And we know that young people around the world are very concerned about things like climate change. Many of them are thinking they do not want to have children because there will not be enough food to eat. Or they are aware that hundreds of millions of people are going to be displaced by heat or fire or drought, or sea level rise. It is a very grim future. So, I often get asked, what gives you hope? In my thinking about this, I have realized that I am not so sure that is the best kind of question to ask: what gives you hope. Because that makes it sound like hope is a thing that you can have. Some people have it, some people do not. It is like a vaccine. If you have it, you are protected from all the trouble in the world. I do not think that is what hope is. I do not think hope is an object that some people have and some do not. I think hope is a self-involving activity. Rather than answering or even asking the question, “what gives you hope?” I would advocate for a different question: what do you love? That is a better and more helpful question. The reason I think it is important to ask that question is that when you ask what do you love, you are at the same time talking about what you will be prepared to commit to protecting and nurturing and cherishing. Because hope lives where love goes to work. That is my short definition of what hope is: hope is not a thing; it is something that you do.
諾曼威茲伯：其實這與我所重視的農業和環境問題息息相關。現今諸多的新聞確實很慘淡，世界各地的年輕人都非常關注氣候變遷等議題。許多年輕人不想有下一代，因為擔心未來會缺糧，或者數億人將因高溫、火災、乾旱或海平面上升等環境變化而流離失所，未來將非常嚴峻。我經常被問到「是什麼賦予你希望？」思考此問題的同時，我同時意識到這不一定是個好問題。因為這個闡述聽起來像是希望是能夠被擁有的東西，有些人有，有些人則否。彷彿它像一種疫苗，如果擁有它就能免受世上的麻煩，但我不認為這該稱之為「希望」。我認為希望是一種自我參與的活動。與其回答或甚至詢問「是什麼給了你希望？」我反而覺得應該問「你喜歡什麼？」這是一個更佳也更有益的問題。這個問題的重要性在於當你問人喜歡什麼時，也是在定義應該保護和珍惜的承諾，希望存在於「愛」發揮其作用之處。這便是我對希望的簡短定義：希望並非某個東西，而是你所做的某件事。
I recognize that there are a lot of people who say, well, why not just be optimistic? I say, well, optimism is very different than hope. Because optimism says things are going to work out okay, do not worry, it is all going to be all right. But what people do not appreciate is that optimism is a very conservative way of thinking because it does not challenge the status quo, right? The status quo says, just keep doing what you are going to do and things are going to work out okay. Well, we know that things are not going to work out okay because the neoliberal capitalist status quo is what is producing the problems that young people are facing. Hope is different than optimism because hope does not say there will not be bad things happening. We know there are going to be bad things that are happening. What hope does is it asks us, what are you going to do about a world? How can you imagine a future different from the status quo, so that life can be cherished rather than abused? As Wendell Berry says, hope lives in the means not the ends. We do not owe young people a prediction about how the world is going to be 50 years from now. We do not owe young people the saying, “Do not worry, it is going to be okay.” That is a lie. What we owe young people is our commitment to do the good that we know we should do right now, and have that work be an expression of our love for them. What I want to say about hope is it’s a discipline. It is not cheer up optimism. It is honest and it is a recognition that there is going to be suffering and pain in the future. But what is crucial to hope is the commitment of people to join their love with the good and the beauty that is in the world. And when we do that, we will create beautiful places. We will create healthy communities. We will create good farmland. Because what will be guiding us is not fear, not despair, not cherry optimism. What will be guiding us is our love for our places, our communities, and our love for each other.
我知道有很多人會反駁為何不保持樂觀？我認為樂觀與希望截然不同。樂觀主義強調任何事情皆會好轉，毋需擔心。但人們不推崇的是，樂觀主義是一種非常保守的思維方式，因為它不挑戰現狀。而是繼續無所作為，相信事情就會好起來。我們知道事實並非如此，新自由資本主義現狀造就年輕世代正面臨的問題。希望和樂觀不同，因為希望並不意味壞事不會發生。而希望就彷彿是質疑我們「你打算對世界做什麼？如何想像在一個異於現狀的未來中，生命是被珍惜而非濫用的？」正如溫德爾．貝瑞所言，希望存在於手段而非目的。年輕一代不需要關於 50 年後世界發展的預測。也不需被告知「別擔心，一切都會好起來的」，那都是謊言罷了。我們該承諾做到應行之善事以傳達我們的愛。希望應是一種紀律而非鼓舞人心的樂觀，誠實認知到未來將會有苦難發生。至關重要的是人們應承諾將愛與世上美好的事物相結合。美麗的地方將被創建，包括健康的社區和良田。指引我們的並非恐懼和絕望，也非樂觀；而是人們對地方、社區和彼此的愛。
Serena Chou: Perhaps I could have a follow-up question: I like your definition of hope. How do you see that in the context or framework of Christian concept of salvation?
周序樺：我喜歡您對希望的定義。想再延伸一個問題：您如何看待基督教「救贖」概念的背景和框架？
Norman Wirzba: That is a major term, right? But it is used not just in Christian circles. I mean, Karl Marx had a version of salvation, too. A salvation story is basically any of the ways that we have to talk about life at its best. When do we know that we are doing a really good job in our living? And that is what salvation is trying to help us understanding. From a Christian point of view, salvation is achieved when people live in such a way that all of the relationships that inform their living are characterized by love. One of the reasons we have so much pain and suffering in the world is because we have distorted or denied love. Violence, abuse: these are all expressions of people’s inability to love. The salvation story, as Christians understand, is one in which God is continually teaching people what love requires. And in the Christian frame in particular, Jesus is the one who shows people what it means to love. What he does is very practical. He feeds people, he heals people, he forgives people, he reconciles people, and he becomes friends to people who have no friends. These become exercises or demonstrations of what salvation looks like, and what love looks like. The kingdom of God is what Christians say is the world in which the love of God is the only power ruling our relationships. That implies salvation. To put it very practically or personally, I asked people to imagine what their life would be like if everything that they touched, everything they engaged was being nurtured and cared for, and also understood and felt that all the people in their life were trying to work to make sure that they could have the best life possible and they were committed to helping other people live their best possible life. What a different world we would be in, right? That is what animates the Christian vision of salvation. It is God’s love taking root in people’s lives, so that the care of each other and the care of our places is the number one and only priority. It is a beautiful ideal that, sadly, is rarely realized on this earth.
諾曼威茲伯：這是一個術語，但不僅用於基督教。馬克思(Karl Marx)也有一套救贖的版本。救贖故事基本上是談論生活的最佳方式之一。我們如何得知在生活中做得很好？這就是救贖所協助我們理解的面向。從基督教的角度而言，所有影響人們生活的關係都以愛為表徵時，救贖就實現了。我們在世界上遭受如此多苦難的原因之一正是因為我們扭曲和否認愛。無論暴力或是虐待都是人們無法去愛的表現。正如基督徒所理解的，救贖故事即是上帝不斷教導人們何謂愛。在基督教中耶穌以實際行為向人們展示愛的意義，他餵養、醫治、寬恕、勸和、並與沒有朋友的人成為朋友。這些形塑出救贖的模樣並示範何謂愛。基督徒所說的神的國度是這樣的世界，在當中，神的愛是支配關係的唯一力量，這也意味著救贖。。我試圖讓人們想像如果他們接觸和從事的一切都得到妥善地滋養和照顧，那會是怎樣的生活，並且也去理解和感受，所有人都在努力確保自己能夠最好地活著，同時也致力於幫助他人盡可能活出最好的生活。我們會活在多麼不同的世界，不是嗎？這便是基督教之救贖。上帝的愛在人們的生活中紮根，所以對彼此和對所在之處的關心是最首要的。這是相當美好的願景，遺憾的是鮮少被世人理解。
Serena Chou: Thank you for the deep insights into the telos of salvation. Today we have a diverse audience with us today: from students to professors of various disciplinary backgrounds. I think we have all enjoyed this interview and conversation very much. There is a lot of information and knowledge for the audience in Taiwan and other Asian sites to take home and ponder for years to come. We will surely benefit from your ecocritical and historical insights.
周序樺：感謝您對救贖的深刻見解。今日的與會者非常多元，包括來自不同學科背景的學生與教授們，我們都非常享受這次的對談。您對生態和歷史的見解使我們獲益良多，也讓台灣及亞洲各國的聽眾帶回許多資訊與知識，做為日後思考與激盪的材料。
[1] Thomas Jefferson(1743-1826)，美國第三任總統，認為小農因為遵循自然法則，崇尚自給自足，而在道德上與經濟上都成為民主社會的基礎，然而傑佛遜在促成小農經濟的同時，也建立在國家對領土的積極擴張與開墾上。
[2] The Twelve Southern Agrarians或the Twelve Southerners，是1920、30年代美國南方支持小農的社團之一，分別是Donald Davidson、John Gould Fletcher、Henry Blue Kline、Lyle H. Lanier、Andrew Nelson Lytle、Herman Clarence Nixon、Frank Lawrence Owsley、John Crowe Ransom、Allen Tate、John Donald Wade、Robert Penn Warren與Stark Young，他們的身分大多是詩人、小說家、歷史學者或教授。
[3] Wendell Berry (1934-)，美國小說家，詩人，散文家，環保活動家，文化評論家和農夫。Berry與美國肯塔基州農村有著深厚的聯結，他的父母雙方家族至少有五代人都在這個地區務農，而Berry的寫作也與農業、農村社區的發展密切相關。
[4] Wes Jackson (1936-)，是國際永續農業運動的領導者，他與Dana Jackson創建了土地學會（Land Institute），致力於探究可永續發展的農業項目。Wes Jackson與Wendell Berry也是多年好友，Berry認為Jackson在土地學會的農業研究發展出「以自然為典範」來思考農業問題的可能性。
[5] Vandana Shiva (1952-)，是印度學者，環保活動家，糧食主權倡導者，生態女權主義者和反全球化運動的代表人物之一。她曾協助非洲、亞洲、拉丁美洲、愛爾蘭等地的綠色運動基層組織，反對以基因工程促進農業發展，她也積極投入在推廣有機農業和公平貿易，致力於保護生物資源的多樣性和生態完整性。
以上編註12345說明文字皆係根據英文wikipedia（維基百科）相關辭條翻譯、改寫而成。
[6] Wendell Berry (1934-)，美國小說家，詩人，散文家，環保活動家，文化評論家和農夫。Berry與美國肯塔基州農村有著深厚的聯結，他的父母雙方家族至少有五代人都在這個地區務農，而Berry的寫作也與農業、農村社區的發展密切相關。
[7] David Orr (1944-)是歐柏林學院（Oberlin College）的保羅·西爾斯（Paul Sears）環境研究特聘教授與政治學榮譽教授，其著作與研究關注議題廣泛，橫跨了環境與政治、環境教育、校園綠化、綠色建築、生態設計和氣候變遷等多個領域。
[8] 根據美國在臺協會所發布，〈2022年宗教自由報告-台灣部分〉中所引用的中研院社會所調查資料指出：「若只能選擇單一信仰，台灣有27.9%的民眾認為自己信奉傳統民俗宗教，19.8%為佛教，18.7%為道教，23.9%為無宗教信仰。其餘人口主要信奉基督新教（5.5%）、一貫道（2.2%）和天主教（1.4%）。」
https://www.ait.org.tw/zhtw/zhtw-2022-report-on-international-religious-freedom-taiwan/瀏覽日期：2023年10月21日。
