From 2004, Lütge was assistant professor at the department of philosophy of Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, from which he also received his habilitation in 2005.
Since August 2010, he holds the newly created Peter Löscher Endowed Chair of Business Ethics at Technical University of Munich.
He questions the often implicit assumption of many contemporary political philosophers according to which a society needs its citizens to adopt some shared basic qualities, views or capabilities (here termed a moral surplus).
He finds that each moral surplus is either not necessary for the stability of societies or cannot remain stable when faced with opposing incentives.
In 2016, he was appointed by Federal Minister of Transport and Digital Infrastructure Alexander Dobrindt to serve on the German government's Ethics Commission on Autonomous Driving.
[7] In 2017, Lütge was elected into the executive committee of the International Society for Business, Ethics and Economics (ISBEE).
[8] From 2018 to 2020, he was Liaison Professor of the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes (German Academic Scholarship Foundation) and, since 2018, Member of the Scientific Board of AI4People.
According to a spokesman for the state government in Munich, Lütge was fired because of repeated public statements incompatible with the responsibilities of his position.