The Tyranny of Merit: What's Become of the Common Good?

by Michael J. Sandel

Philosophically, the assertion that principles of justice must be defined independent of considerations of merit, virtue, or moral desert is an instance of a more general feature of Rawls’s liberalism. This is the claim that the “right” (the framework of duties and rights that governs society as a whole) is prior to the “good” (the various conceptions of virtue and the good life that people pursue within the framework). Principles of justice that affirmed a particular conception of merit, virtue, or moral desert would not be neutral toward the competing conceptions of the good life that citizens in pluralist societies espouse. Such principles would impose on some the values of others and so fail to respect everyone’s right to choose and pursue their own way of life.