Undergraduate studies in Philosophy and Social and Economic History at Georg-August-University Göttingen and Universidad Complutense de Madrid (BA 2017). Graduate studies in Philosophy and Public Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science (MSc 2019). Further graduate studies in Philosophy at Humboldt-University Berlin (MA 2021) while stipendiary of the Deutschlandstipendium.

Various employments at political foundations, private companies and public institutions as well as charity work.

Since October 2021 doctoral research fellow at the Institute of Philosophy, Free University Berlin and member of the DFG-funded research training group 2638 Normativity, Critique, Change. Spring term 2023 and fall term 2024 Visiting Fellow at the Department of Government at Harvard University. PhD project supervised by Stefan Gosepath (FU) and Thomas Schmidt (HU).

The Foundations of What We Deserve: Distributive Justice and Moral Inequality

This dissertation engages with the moral limits of merit-based rewards systems. At its core, it is concerned with objectionable meritocratic attitudes as they are alleged to erode the common good and foster socioeconomic inequality. The project proceeds by analyzing the concept of desert as a principle of distributive justice. The value of each individual’s actions and traits is at the core of the justification of inequalities as deserved. It is the belief that some are more deserving than others due to their effort-making or social contributions. The dissertation argues that an analysis of desert as a principle of distributive justice illuminates the theoretical underpinnings of meritocratic attitudes. Ultimately, the dissertation argues that desert allows for and promotes objectionable inequalities. The dissertation is guided by a concern about and opposition to deserved inequalities.

This dissertation analyzes and rejects this distinct philosophical justification of what we deserve, i.e., it rejects distributive desert. People do not fundamentally deserve the advantages and disadvantages economic institutions make possible. For that reason, even justified demands that people change their behavior and criticism when they lack certain characteristics, e.g., the ability or willingness to make an effort or to contribute, are irrelevant for the justice of economic institutions. Basing the justification of distributive inequalities on the value of the behavior and characteristics people have, moreover, will valorize the better off and demean the worse off. For that reason, economic institutions purporting to make possible advantages and disadvantages based on desert moralize socioeconomic inequalities in ways that can be reasonably rejected.

Overall, I argue that distributive desert fails to adequately differentiate between what is economically and morally valuable. Desert justifies material inequalities based on morally significant values and evaluates the deserving individuals by virtue of their moral character and personal characteristics. It also leaves it to the conventions of society to determine what or how much is deserved, for example, how much wealth or income inequality is deserved and appropriate. Desert thus fails to adequately specify what people deserve independently of given social norms. As a result, desert justifies distributive inequalities as differences in the moral value that individuals have to their society. This moralizes the material differences between people. Moralizing distributive inequalities is objectionable because it violates a constitutive distinction for distributive desert: Only claims regarding the instrumental value and not the moral value of what individuals have done or the ways that they are like can justify distributive inequalities. However, moralized inequalities purport to present these differences in the benefits and burdens between individuals as consequence of the superior or inferior moral value of individuals’ actions or characteristics. This should be rejected.

My aim in this thesis is to demonstrate that distributive desert should be rejected because it moralizes distributive inequalities. With my analysis, I hope to show that this is a concern firmly rooted in the normative features of desert as a principle of distributive justice. We need not object to the value of effort-making or contributing to object to deserved inequalities. But we should object to inequalities that are being justified as deserved for they entrench and deepen material differences as morally significant differences between persons.

Research Interests

• moral philosophy (egalitarianism, relational/social equality, deontological ethics and contractualism, fairness & competition, debates around desert, moral responsibility, blame and hypocrisy)
• political philosophy/theory
• feminist philosophy
• social philosophy
• applied ethics, intersection between philosophy and public policy

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.
• 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

• “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 5^th 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 6^th Student Philosophy Conference [Bundesfachschaftentagung], Düsseldorf, September 20, 2019.
• “’Having Too Much’ and Libertarian Freedom,” Presented at the 7^th LSE-Bayreuth Student Philosophy Conference, London, May 2, 2019.