U.T.R. (Titus) Stahl, Dr

If you are interested in doing a philosophy or PPE MA in Groningen and want to chat, please feel free to get in touch!

If you are a (prospective) PhD student who is interested in my areas of research, please get in touch with me. Unfortunately, there is very little institutional funding available at this moment, but if you already have a PhD position or scholarship, it is sometimes possible to do a joint supervision arrangement with another university ("co-tutelle") or arrange a research visit. Do not hesitate to ask!

Most of my work is located in four domains:

Political philosophy of the digital sphere

I work on the link between democracy and issues of privacy, social media algorithms, and the importance of digital sovereignty for democratic self-government. In these areas, I am interested in cooperating with public institutions to discover together with them how they can realize the values to which they are committed in their digital policies.

The Philosophy of Hope

Much of what we do in our personal and collective life is motivated by certain hopes. Our hopes are often indispensable for who we are. But not all hopes are good for us. I am interested in finding out what makes individual and collective hopes rational and how our society can foster inclusive, rational hopes for all its members.

Critical Theory, Democracy and the Question of Power

Critical social theories are committed to the value of freedom from oppression and domination. However, how they understand oppression and domination is often quite unclear as is the question of what the standpoint is from which we can criticize unacceptable relations of power. Much of my current work is concerned with the issue how to think about the power that not other people, but social structures exercise of our lives. If that power shapes not only how we act, but also how we think - that is the concepts we use -, then how can we employ those very concepts to criticize those forms of power?

Ideology

People often act in ways that undermine their rational interests. Sometimes, this is due to individual irrationality. At other times, this is an effect of the ways in which social practices and structures affect their self-understanding. Traditionally, this phenomenon has been described as "ideology". I am interested in formulating a theory of ideology that does not understand ideology as a matter of false beliefs, but of distorted concepts. Such a conception will be helpful for understanding many of the pathologies of our contemporary political landscape.