About · Research Projects · Papers · CV · Teaching · Presentation Slides
Hello! I work in ethics and political philosophy. Currently, I am a wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter (a kind of non-tenure track assistant professor) at the Munich School of Politics and Public Policy and a founding lab member of the Democratic Innovations Lab at the TUM Think Tank.
Most of my research is motivated by the question what a commitment to democracy means for the design of economic institutions. For instance, how do basic political rights bear on what business corporations should look like? This interest has lead me to work on a variety of topics like labour rights, strikes, expropriation, and workplace democracy. I wrote my dissertation on the democratisation of business corporations. You can read it here.
One important commitment in my pursuit of these research projects is a special concern for empirical grounding. I strive to clarify abstract normative claims through their application to real examples and through spelling out their meaning in real life, closely integrating case studies as well as results from empirical social science.
I also teach a variety of topics in ethics and political philosophy for all kinds of students, from introductory undergraduate courses to advanced MA-level courses.
Until July 2025 I was a fixed-term lecturer at Utrecht University where I completed my PhD in January 2025 and was part of the Corporatocracy project. I did my BA in Philosophy in Frankfurt and an interdisciplinary MA in “Ethics - Economics, Law and Politics” in Bochum. I have also worked in a concrete factory, in a chemical laboratory, as a mountain bike guide, a hotel receptionist, and a bicycle messenger before finding my way into academia.
You can find my full CV here.
In case you are currently listening to me giving a talk, you can find my slides here.
You can get in touch with me via e-mail: philippstehr at posteo dot de
I am currently working on two main research projects. The first is concerned with developing some of the institutional details of workplace democracy. A lot of the debate in this literature has focused on clarifying the basic claim and finding out whether workers do in fact deserve democratic rights at work. I think enough has been said on this point and there is little to add. Instead, I want to look at what exactly more democratic workplaces should look like. Should they be representative or deliberative democracies? Who gets a say? What rights should the elected bosses have?
The second is a project on political resistance, again with a particular focus on the economic sphere. A lot of political philosophy focuses on what people have a right to and what institutions would realise those rights. But philosophers have not yet said much about what political actions people should take to help bring about these better institutions. If we think that economic institutions are flawed in certain ways (unjust, undemocratic, etc.), what are citizens morally permitted to do about it? Can you sabotage your workplace if the working conditions are unsafe? Are you allowed to steal if your boss pays less than a living wage?
Fighting Organizational Degeneration Through a Right to Strike in Democratic Corporations. Journal of Social Philosophy, Early View. Link (Open Access)
A Democratic Right to Political Strikes. Political Philosophy, 2(2): 575-604. Link (Open Access)
Expropriation as a measure of corporate reform - learning from the Berlin initiative. European Journal of Political Theory, 24(1): 70-91. Link (Open Access)
The Boundary Problem in Workplace Democracy: Who Constitutes the Corporate Demos? Political Theory, 51(3): 507-529. Link (Open Access)
Since the fall term 2025/6 I am teaching introductory and advanced courses in political philosophy and ethics in the BA Political Science and the MA Politics & Technology at TUM.
In the summer term 2025 I taught a course on democratic innovations at TU Munich. In the Academic Year 2024/25 I’ve also been teaching a range of graduate and undergraduate courses in the Philosophy, PPE, and Applied Ethics programs at Utrecht. In 2022 and 2023 I have co-taught an Introduction to Political Philosophy for undergraduate PPE students at Utrecht.
Students can find some basic tips for studying philosophy here.
Below you can find some syllabi of courses I (co-)designed and taught in the past:
Philipp Stehr
Munich School of Politics and Public Policy
Richard-Wagner-Str. 1
80333 München
Germany