The Tyranny of Merit

The world's most famous philosophy professor analyzes the failure of the meritocratic system and addresses the most important question of our time: what has become of the common good?

Western societies suffer from two related ills: economic inequality and political polarization. In the resulting quagmire, we seem to have lost sight of the key notion of the common good. In this foundational work, Michael J. Sandel asks how to recover it.

When there are only winners and losers and social mobility has stalled, the combination of anger and frustration that fuels polarization and populist protest is inevitable, in addition to reducing trust in institutions and in our fellow citizens. Thus, we cannot morally confront current challenges.

Sandel, Princess of Asturias Award for Social Sciences and one of the most prestigious philosophers of our time, argues that to overcome the crises that besiege our societies, we must rethink the ideas of success and failure that have accompanied globalization and the increase in inequality. Meritocracy generates a harmful complacency among winners and imposes a very harsh sentence on losers. Sandel advocates another way of thinking about success, one that is more attentive to the role of luck, more in line with an ethics of humility and solidarity, and more assertive of the dignity of work. With these moral foundations, The Tyranny of Merit presents a hopeful vision of a new politics finally focused on the common good.