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Here the Radboud University presents theses written by students affiliated with the various bachelor and master programmes offered at the Radboud University, as well as papers written by students of the Radboud Honours Academy.
Recent Submissions
Item Opaque Images of the Human: Toward an Aesthetic Resistance with Intersectionality(2024-09-02)The images, descriptions, and categories through which we approach humanity’s many facets can both enable and limit how we come to understandings of the human. Engaging a critique of representation, this article investigates how we might create ways of disclosing the human that rejects the reduction, classification, and subjectification of people. By weaving together the philosophies of Glissant and Lugones, I bring the concept of opacity in conversation with intersectionality to unfold a strategic path toward new encounters and images. As a contrast with dehumanizing and transparent practices, I argue that opacity offers an aesthetic resistance that refutes representation’s violent demands and points to the excesses that modernity cannot account for.Item A Hylomorphic Account of the Concept of Function in the New Mechanist Philosophy of Science(2024-08-31)New Mechanist Philosophy (NMP) sees mechanisms as ubiquitously functional. Nonetheless, there is a profound disagreement on whether functions are mind-independent facts. In this article, I use the Thomistic conception of causality to defend the realism of mechanistic functions. I show that contemporary realist accounts of mechanisn lack the kind of ontological strength that hylomorphism can provide, while perspectivalism fails to offer a convincing argument to defend functions as mere explanatory techniques. I show how hylomorphic ontology might help NMP realists build better arguments against perspectivalism and how NMP might be strengthened with further debate between both traditions.Item Prosperity Gospel(2024-08-30)The prosperity gospel, also known as the health and wealth gospel, is centered on money, success, and good fortune. Popular televangelists promise a broad audience that if they give money to these churches and have strong faith, God will bless them with wealth and healing. In my master's thesis, I conducted a historical-critical hermeneutical analysis of the prosperity gospel, examining it through the lens of Max Weber's ideal-typical Puritan ethic, Calvinist work ethics, and Protestant theology, and comparing it to Catholic social teachings on the topics of wealth and health through faith. Finally, I compared this New Age-like prosperity gospel to the intended meaning of the Biblical Godly path of wisdom, blessing, and healing. The central theme of my master's thesis, therefore, was all about discernment.Item Searching for Symbiosis: Role of Deep Ecology in Probiotic Ecology(2024-08-29)This thesis looks at a prospective way of viewing ecological management and restoration through the lens of probiotic ecology: the science of studying and examining the relationships in probiotic management and using this knowledge to make changes in ecosystems and relationships with nature. Jamie Lorimer’s concept of ‘probiotic management’ is discussed, analysing the potential problems and ethical implications of such a practice. The thesis explores environmental ethical frameworks that can be attached to probiotic management, contending deep ecology as the most applicable framework to help deal with the ethical concerns.Item Food Systems Sustainability: The New Transatlantic Clash for Global Climate and Environmental Leadership(2023-07-03)The European Commission’s publication of its Farm to Fork strategy in May 2020 has led to the emergence of a transatlantic conflict between the EU and the US over a new type of issue: how to feed the world in a sustainable manner. Taking these recent tensions as a case study, this thesis has examined the EU and US visions of sustainable food systems to discover the extent to which they differ from each other. To answer this question, this thesis has examined the EU F2F strategy and the US response to it by using the agroecology and sustainable intensification ideal-type visions of sustainable food systems in combination with three functions of Entman’s definition of framing as an analytical framework. The findings of the analysis reveal that while the EU vision stands on the agroecology side of the spectrum between the two ideal-types, the US vision is clearly on the opposite side, closer to the sustainable intensification vision. These conclusions mean that any transatlantic cooperation on the matter can be expected to be difficult as, while agreeing on the objective of achieving sustainable food systems, the EU and the US do not agree on what this means, and by consequence, the road to getting there. Finally, the dynamics identified in this thesis, which show EU-US competition for global leadership on this novel issue of food systems sustainability appears to align with the broader transatlantic competition for climate and environmental leadership.
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