Deeply embedded in the ideals of justice and fairness is the idea that we ought to get what we deserve. Deservingness is thus an intuitively compelling concept, because we want the world to be intelligible. If the good suffer and the wicked flourish, then the world not only becomes a painful place to live in, it also becomes a place of moral chaos. Even if the world is bountifully unjust, it remains a necessary illusion that people get what they deserve. We need to believe our actions matter if we are to generate the necessary motivation to pursue the things we want.
This is the ideal of meritocracy. At its core, this ideology holds that social and economic differences are justified when they reflect individual effort or talent. It fits well with our neoliberal free-market democracies, which present themselves as open systems of opportunity that reward those who compete successfully. Meritocracy implies that inequality is just and fair. Those who rise deserve to rise; those who fall behind are encouraged to try harder. We must each pull ourselves up by our bootstraps.
‘Meritocracy’ itself might be a relatively new word, dating back to Michael Young’s coinage in the 1950s, but long before neoliberalism another, much more ancient, philosophy justified inequality as the well-deserved consequence of individual effort: Confucianism. Examining where Confucianism goes wrong illuminates how we should challenge the powerful ideology of meritocracy.
Confucius (c551-c479 BCE) lived during the late Zhou dynasty, a time of intense political conflict between rival feudal lords. He was a teacher and minor official who moved between courts offering advice. He believed that the violent disorder of his era stemmed from moral failure that was ultimately preventable. So Confucius’s project was practical: through moral education, individuals could refine themselves and, through that refinement, a well-ordered hierarchy could restore stability.
Confucian political philosophy begins from a premise that appears strikingly egalitarian: the equality of opportunity. For Confucius and his successors, human beings are more or less equal in talent at birth. Everyone possesses the capacity for moral cultivation. Education, self-discipline and ethical refinement remain open paths that anyone can undertake, no matter where they’re from. This shared starting point anchors Confucian humanism: you can make it if you try.
His commitment to openness and mobility is born out of a robust conception of moral agency and the power of the human will. Confucians believe that individuals are responsible for what they become. Through sustained efforts such as learning, ritual practice and disciplined self-regulation, people actively shape their character. Individuals therefore stand in a morally significant relation to their outcomes. One’s social position is responsive to agency, despite one’s circumstances.
The Confucian philosopher Mencius (Mengzi) articulated this idea more systematically, which was later called ‘natural equality’: all human beings share the same basic moral capacity. Everyone possesses the potential for goodness. Since everyone has the same equality of opportunity, unequal outcomes and differences in social position follow differences in effort, discipline and development.
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