生之分享 | Andreas Weber博士: 「世界是活的，万物是有灵的」重新审视西方世界刻意回避至少500年的观点

原创 Dr.Andreas Weber WorkFace柏林

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作者：Dr. Andreas Weber

翻译：赵宇

设计排版：邓琳洁

策划审校：方曼

以下内容节选自

《分享生命：万物有灵思想的生态政治实践》

（SharingLife：Animism as Ecopolitical Practice）

个人网站：http://autor-andreas-weber.de/

The animistic worldviews of indigenous peoples contain practices and knowledge that can be of crucial guidance for the multiple crises of our current time, which has been named the Anthropocene. These crises are manifold, but related: They all concern the breakdown of participation and equality, be it towards non-human beings or other humans. The dilemma of the Anthropocene could be defined as a relationship disaster on various levels, a dissolution of the collective. This is strongly related to the core conditions of western thinking. Western thinking tends to be antagonistic and resource-oriented, whereas animistic thinking tends to be inclusive and community-oriented. It does not create the split into actors and environment, which haunts western culture and its treatment of non-human domains of reality.

原住民万物有灵论的世界观包含了应对当下时代（人类世）多重危机的宝贵知识实践。这些危机中尤其涉及到自然，社会参与，社会平等。西方思维往往是对立且以资源为导向的，而万物有灵的思想却是包容且以社群为导向的。参与者和环境的割裂一直困扰着西方文化现实中对待非人类的方式。万物有灵的思想却不会造成这种割裂。

Adopting this stance, or at least reviewing its usefulness for a shift of the occidental approach to reality, could be a major breakthrough for social and ecological sustainability strategies. And it could lead to a cultural shift: A shift to the perspective that this world is profoundly alive (instead, as the mainstream holds, that it is dead, a “mere thing”, through and through) could lay the groundwork for those “unprecedented” changes in society and economy, which have been called forward in the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2018 report, and which, no doubt, are required.

基于上述立场，尤其是反思对于西方思想现实化的作用，可以说万物有灵思想是社会和生态可持续性战略发展的重大突破。2018年政府间气候变化专门委员会（IPCC）最新的报告中提及了社会经济中一些“前所未有的”变化。万物有灵思想可以为应对这些变化奠定基础。

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This essay, therefore, will explore animistic ways and highlight their differences to a western style approach to reality. Obviously, there are many indigenous people, and equally many animistic cosmologies. Here, I follow others (Kohn 2013; Viveiros de Castro, 2016) in suggesting that there is nonetheless a common ground of indigenous thinking and acting, which stands in opposition to western thought. From a western perspective it is helpful to look at these defining divergences, at the grand structures, in order to adopt a more critical point of view on the own cosmology.

显然有很多原住人民以及宇宙学万物有灵论者。在这里，我继承了前人的研究工作（Kohn，2013；Viveiros de Castro，2016）。我们认为西方思想和万物有灵思想行为仍存在共通之处，从西方思想的角度来观察其与万物有灵思想的分歧是非常有帮助的。

For half a century, part of the western fashion of enlightening and teaching non-western peoples was to explain to them the idea of what later was to be called “sustainability”. This has influenced ecopolitics in the global south to a huge degree. It meant to declare that the old ways were childish superstitions, which needed to be discarded for a scientific handle on the world, and to put trees, rivers, and other living beings into the status of mere things and then proceed to their protection – often bluntly against the living relationships of humans with these beings.

半个世纪以来，西方思想启蒙东方人民的一部分方式就是传授“可持续发展”的想法。这意味着赋予树木，河流以及其他生物某种地位，然后继续保护它们。这种思维方式往往否定了人类与这些生命之间的共生关系。本文其实想尝试扭转这种观点：我们假设将这个生机勃勃的星球视为各种客体的组合，然后尝试保护其中更珍贵的物体（谁来决定？）的想法不起作用。

Sustainability cannot cure the “health” of biomes without taking into account the livelihoods of the humans. Conversely, the ways, and thoughts, and desires of non-human beings cannot be omitted, if the whole of a given community-in-country, humans and otherwise, is meant to thrive. Therefore, it is worthwhile – indeed, it might be the only way out – to turn around and look into a direction the western worldview has deliberately avoided for at least the last 500 years. It is the perspective that the world is alive. It is the perspective that the world is animated.

没有人类的生计，可持续发展就无法治疗生物群落的“健康”。如果人类和非人类想要共同繁荣发展，那么非人类的方式，思想和欲望也不应被忽略。因此，我们值得重新审视西方世界观刻意回避了至少500年的观点。这种观点便是世界是活的，万物是有灵的。

There is an intrinsic contradiction in the circumstance that a white male biologist, philosopher and nature writer from the North (me)2 is composing an essay about the need to rediscover the animistic reality of living in relationships within a collective of life. The contradiction lies in the fact that I am trained in the machinery of western thinking. This thinking – and its tool, the discursive, competitive, and ultimately eliminative argument, which is usually laid out in essays or books – is what brought animistic worldmaking down.

本人作为一个北方的白人生物学家和哲学家，却正在写一篇自我消解西方思想，重新发现万物有灵的文章。这个过程其实是有很多内部矛盾的。矛盾点在于：哲学家是在西方思维方式体系下进行训练的。这个经常在文章书籍中出现的矛盾点，就是构建万物有灵的世界的阻碍。

Western thinking is based on the assumption that there is a sphere of reason – be it semiotic or mathematical – which is the only serious vantage point from which to sort the threads of the fabric of our cosmos. Already the attempt of a description will procreate the western ideas of how to structure, which have a lot to do with particular dichotomies (mind-matter, actor-object, culture-nature) on which the western cosmology rests. Everything in the mind of a thinker applying western style arguments hence becomes incorporated into the western hegemony, so the warning goes, or is rendered invisible by it. A worldview, or better a host of different worldviews, which thrive through direct communication and felt exchange with the non-human persons, can ipso facto not be described in terms of western scientific discourse.

西方思维是基于一个理性范围的假设 –可以是符号学或数学–这是我们从用来理解宇宙的线索。因此，采用西方风格论证的思想家脑中的想法将在有意无意中成为这场霸权的一部分。通过直接和非人类交流的世界观，事实上也无法出现在西方科学体系的术语中。

And, even more dangerous: If somebody deeply anchored in this discourse tries to trace this other cosmos, will it, this other reality, inevitably be sucked into the western model – a world split into (western human) subjects, and the remainder of mere objects – and hence be invalidated, and, worse still, again colonised?

更加危险的是：如果有人深深地沉迷于这种话语中并且试图追寻其他体系，是否会不可避免地要将其吸纳到西方模式中？这种模式以西方人类为主体，其余的都是仅仅是一些客体对象。这些客体对象往往被无效化甚至是被殖民化了？

These are extremely necessary cautions. Still, in order to step out of the trap of the western cognitive model (western – human – subjects here, mere objects there), western thinking needs to be opened up to what it is not. The best way to do this is to start a (painful, and painfully slow) journey of unlearning of what the western cognitive hegemony is about.

这些都是极需关注的事项。而且为了走出这种西方认知模型的陷阱（西方人类为主体，其余仅为客体），西方的思想需要更加开放。最好的方法就是开始一个（痛苦而缓慢的）旅程，将之前的认知霸权逐步忘却消解。

This is a two-way-process, consisting of a radical self-questioning of western thinking, and of an invitation to those who are not entirely trapped inside the western discourse to assume the role of mentors. I wish the essay to be understood in this way: As an attempt of a western mind to question himself. As an open query, and a request for mentoring. As an attempt of self-decolonisation in need of guidance. We know, as in any healing processes, that the goal dreamt up ahead is never wholly reached. But healing is the process itself, not the end of it.

这是一个双向过程，即包括对西方思想激烈的自我质疑，又包括邀请没有被困在西方思想体系的人扮演引领者的角色。我希望这篇文章能被这样理解：作为一个西方思想者的自我质疑；作为一个公开的探索；作为一个对引领的需求; 作为自我去殖民化的需要引导的尝试。

我们知道，就像在任何康复过程一样，梦想的目标永远不会完全实现。然而康复本身就是这样一个过程，而不是它的终点。

So I want to invite all who are (at least partly) living in worlds, which are still shared between human und non-human persons, to chime in, take my hand, direct my gaze, and lead me, the author, and us, the readers, under a tree, where relations are not analysed, but felt, and made. Please take this piece of writing as a question, not as an answer. I have written it as one loop in an unending process of learning and unlearning, a process that is intrinsically shared and thus dependent on mutual transformation.

所以我想邀请所有生活在世界之间的生命，人类和非人类，请加入我，牵着我的手，带领我，也带领我们西方读者，在一棵树下，不去分析我们的连接而是去感受和建立连接。请把这段文字当作一个问题，而不是答案。我把它写成一个学习和忘却的不断循环。这是一个大家固有的共享的过程，依赖于我们实现这种思想转换。（本章完）

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