Title: How (not) to argue against meritocracy
By Lars Vinx (Cambridge University, Law)
Date: Thursday, May 22, 2025
Time: 1530-1700
Room: H232
Abstract: The ideal of meritocracy has recently come under considerable pressure in political theory. Critics of meritocracy like Michael Sandel and Daniel Markovits argue not merely that existing societies fail to live up to meritocratic standards. Like the sociologist Michael Young, who coined the term ‘meritocracy’ in the 1960’s, Markovits and Sandel claim that a society that perfectly realizes the ideal of meritocracy would be a deeply unjust dystopia.
While contemporary critics of meritocracy are right to reject the claim that it is desirable to organize society along meritocratic lines, their arguments for that critical conclusion are insufficiently radical in their rejection of merit as a standard for the distribution of wealth, income and social positions. The problem with meritocracy is not merely that the pursuit of meritocracy has undesirable social consequences, such as the rise of material inequality and the spread of a social ideology that deprives losers of the bases of self-respect. The ideal of meritocracy is itself morally incoherent.
About the speaker: Lars Vinx is Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of Cambridge. His research is situated at the intersection of legal and political philosophy, constitutional theory, and the history of modern legal thought. Vinx’s work focuses on the normative foundations of constitutionalism and the rule of law, exploring their indispensable role in legitimating political power. His current research investigates whether robust constitutional constraints on legislative and executive authority can be justified by appeal to the ideal of popular sovereignty. Vinx has a particular interest in the constitutional theory of the Weimar Republic and the writings of Hans Kelsen and Carl Schmitt. He is the author of Hans Kelsen’s Pure Theory of Law: Legality and Legitimacy (Oxford University Press, 2007), a widely cited study of Kelsen’s legal philosophy. His editorial and translation work includes The Guardian of the Constitution: Hans Kelsen and Carl Schmitt on the Limits of Constitutional Law (Cambridge University Press, 2015) and, most recently, Carl Schmitt’s Early Legal Theoretical Writings (Cambridge University Press, 2021), co-edited with Samuel Garrett Zeitlin. Before joining Cambridge, Vinx was a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence and taught philosophy at Bilkent University in Ankara. He holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Toronto and an MA in history, philosophy, and political science from the University of Heidelberg.
