Dr. Marius Baumann

Personal information

From 2021 to 2025, Marius Baumann has been the academic director of the Center for Ethics and Philosophy in Practice. Before that, he was the interim academic director of the Munich Center for Ethics and a postdoctoral researcher at the Chair for Ethics and Practical Philosophy. He received his PhD from Bern University and has been a visiting researcher at Reading University, Brown University, and the London School of Economics.

Curriculum vitae

Research interests

Marius Baumann is currently working on the role of the concept of merit in liberal societies. In his PhD thesis, he defended the idea that just as scientific theories can be underdetermined by empirical data, so can moral theories be underdetermined by our particular deontic verdicts. He has investigated the upshots of this idea for both normative ethics and metaethics.

Selected publications

1. Baumann, M.: The Underdetermination of Moral Theories. Cambridge (UK): Cambridge University Press. (forthcoming).
2. Baumann, M.: Michael Sandel on Meritocracy and the Populist Threat to Liberalism: A Critical Assessment, in: J. F. Müller & K. Horn (eds.), Liberal Responses to the Twin Challenge of Populism. Berlin: De Gruyter. (forthcoming).
3. Baumann, M.: Hierarchy, Efficiency, and Merit, in: K. Mathis. & A. Tor (eds.), Economic Analysis of Law in European Legal Scholarship 17. (forthcoming).
4. Baumann, M.: Moral Underdetermination and a New Skeptical Challenge. Synthese 200(208): 1-22. (2022).
5. Baumann, M.: No Fact of the Matter: The Case of Dirty Hands. Metaphilosophy 52(1): 466-478. (2021).
6. Baumann, M.: In Search of the Trinity: A Dilemma for Parfit’s Conciliatory Project. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 24(1): 999-1018. (2021).
7. Baumann, M.: Consequentializing and Underdetermination. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 97(3): 511-527. (2019).
8. Baumann, M.: Parfit, Convergence, and Underdetermination. Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 13(3): 191-221. (2018).