Saturday, 7 March 2026 | 19.35 - 20.10 hrs. | Steigerzaal (140 p.) | De Lindenberg, Nijmegen
Feeling and Thinking
Emotions matter. Our decisions are primarily driven by intuition and emotion, and only afterwards do we construct reasoning to justify those feelings. Environmental philosopher Carmen Dege explains how socio-economic and existential conditions play a part in climate denial and inaction, and analyzes the role of myth in individual and collective responses to crisis. Environmental philosopher Lisa Doeland examines the importance of words in our relationship with environmental issues. Words like “waste” and “recycling” are not neutral. The stories, images, and emotions they evoke influence how we engage with the environment. Philosopher Alphée Mpassi explains how emotion and our relationship with the earth occupy a different place in African philosophy and how this influences our thinking about the climate.
Philosopher Cees Leijenhorst will moderate the discussion.
The program will be in English.
About the speakers
Carmen Dege is an environmental philosopher at Radboud University. She specializes in the role of emotions and myth-making in climate debates and their impact on action.
Alphée Mpassi is philosopher at Radboud University. He conducts research into biopolitics and environmental philosophy. In doing so, he examines the relationship between humans and the environment from the perspective of biopolitics, the Vatican's environmental thinking, and African philosophy.
Lisa Doeland is a philosopher, writer, and lecturer. She is a postdoctoral researcher at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, where she is working on a project about the existential dimensions of planetary health. She is an eco-thinker with an eye for the dark side. To comprehend and depict the ecological catastrophe, she draws on uncanny ways of thinking such as deconstruction, psychoanalysis, and ideology critique.
This program is part of Denkwerk Festival of Radboud Reflects at Radboud University, on Saturday, 7 March 2026 at De Lindenberg in Nijmegen. Through (silent) interviews, lectures, music, films, and more, philosophers, theologians, and scholars of religion from Radboud University will encourage you to think more deeply about the major questions of our time.
