La tiranía del mérito

Western societies suffer from two related ills, economic inequality and political polarization. In the resulting morass, we seem to have lost sight of the key notion of the common good. In this fundamental work, Michael J. Sandel considers how to recover it. When there are only winners and losers and social mobility has stalled, the combination of anger and frustration fueling polarization and populist protest is inevitable, as well as reducing trust in institutions and in our fellow citizens. In this way we cannot morally cope with the current challenges. Sandel, Princess of Asturias Award for Social Sciences and one of the most prestigious philosophers of our time, argues that in order to overcome the crises that beset our societies, we must rethink the ideas of success and failure that have accompanied globalization and the increase in inequality . Meritocracy creates harmful complacency among winners and imposes a harsh sentence on losers. Sandel defends another way of thinking about success, more attentive to the role of luck, more in line with an ethic of humility and solidarity and more demanding of the dignity of work. With these moral wickers, The Tyranny of Merit presents a hopeful vision of a new policy focused at last on the common good.