웬델 베리의 작품에 나타난 질서의 의미

The Meaning of Order in the Works of Wendell Berry

As other ecological writers, concerned with problems of industrial agriculture and commercialized society, Wendell Berry attempts to shape a new ethic with the way or order of nature. He identifies the problems with failures of human disciplines and moral virtues. Berry believes that the failures result from human abuse of land and then alienation of nature. Solutions for the failures which he provides include new ethic values such as ecological vision and awareness, work ethic, moral disciplines, and penance and atonement. The order of nature, which Berry refers to as the structure of Creation, is based on interdependence and interplay between things in the natural world. Berry thinks that nature is orderly and mysterious. To be mysterious means that, although the natural world seems disorderly, the order is manifested in a potential process of birth, growth, death, and decay. This notion of order leads Berry to emotions of reverence, awe, fidelity, and commitment. Berry’s agrarianism begins with his respect and reverence for nature and land. For him, farming is an attempt and a ritual to build a corrective relationship between nature and humans. Berry believes that small-scale farming is not only humble and responsible participation in nature and land, and but a ritual for atonement for his ancestors’ ecological sin. Most of all, he hopes a community which is both autonomous and organized within moral disciplines.