My research focuses on moral and political philosophy and issues of public policy. I am particularly interested in debates about meritocracy and the (in)justice of inequality.

Doctoral Research

I examined whether the idea that inequalities are deserved is problematic: Does the concept of meritocracy reinforce the notion that some people are more morally worthy than others?

My work argues that meritocracy moralizes inequalities by portraying disparities between individuals as evaluations of their relative moral worth. This legitimizes social hierarchies.

My analysis focused on three key aspects: first, whether common grounds for being deserving, such as making an effort and contributing, should be rewarded; second, how we hold each other responsible when claiming that we (do not) deserve success or failure; and finally, how the idea of ‘being deserving’ relates to fittingness and whether meritocracy ultimately rests on the idea that people are more or less praiseworthy.

The project was supervised by Prof. Stefan Gosepath (Freie Universität Berlin), Prof. Thomas Schmidt (Humboldt University Berlin), and Prof. Michael Sandel (Harvard University).

Current Projects [working titles]

Publication of PhD thesis

Meritocracy and Moral Inequality: On the Foundations of What We Deserve (under contract with De Gruyter Brill)

General-audience book in German

Verdiente Ungleichheit. Aufstieg und Abstieg in unserer moralisierten Leistungsgesellschaft [Deserved Inequalities: Rise and Fall in our Moralized Meritocracy] (in preparation)

Journal Article

What If There Had Been No Injustice? (under review)

Journal Article

The Problem with Deserved Inequalities (in preparation)

Publications 

  • Vitz, Yannic (2021): “Applaus, Applaus! Über eine Ethik des Lobes und moralisch unangemessenen Applaus,“ in Romy Jaster & Geert Keil (ed.), Nachdenken über Corona, Stuttgart: Reclam, p. 121-132. [in German]

  • Vitz, Yannic (2019): “'Having Too Much' and Libertarian Freedom” Rerum Causae, 11 (1), pp. 57–69. [https://rc.lse.ac.uk/articles/abstract/167/]

Talks

  • "Are Deserved Inequalities Moralizing?" presented at the Workshop On the Concept of Desert at the Center for Ethics and Philosophy in Practice (ZEPP) at LMU, Munich, January 22, 2025.

  • “What is Economic Desert?” presented at the Society for Analytic Philosophy’s (GAP) Workshop for First Generation Academics, Berlin, April 25, 2024. 

  • “The Axiology of Desert,” presented at the 5th Workshop for Political Philosophy, Düsseldorf, May 26, 2023.

  • “Applaus, Applaus! Über eine Ethik des Lobes und moralisch unangemessenen Applaus,“ Presented at the Research Colloquium, Chair of Philosophical Anthropology Geert Keil, Humboldt-University Berlin, Berlin, November 19, 2020.

  • “Applaus und Covid 19,” Presented at the Research Colloquium, Chair of Practical Philosophy Kirsten Meyer, Humboldt-University Berlin, Berlin, July 13, 2020.

  • “Realising Luck Egalitarianism,” Presented at the Research Colloquium, Chair of Practical Philosophy Kirsten Meyer, Humboldt-University Berlin, Berlin, November 25, 2019.

  • “Realising Luck Egalitarianism: Risk, Open Counterfactuals, and Community,” Presented at the 6th Student Philosophy Conference [Bundesfachschaftentagung], Düsseldorf, September 20, 2019.

  • “'Having Too Much' and Libertarian Freedom,” Presented at the 7th LSE-Bayreuth Student Philosophy Conference, London, May 2, 2019.