Il merito, il bisogno e il bisogno di non confondere merito e bisogno (a proposito di M. Santambrogio, Il complotto contro il merito, Laterza, Bari - Roma, 2021, pp. 220)

This short article explores some key-aspects of the recent book Il complotto contro il merito by the language philosopher Marco Santambrogio. Apart from the title, a bit emphatic, the book does not persuade for three major reasons. Firstly, like much literature on the topics of merit and meritocracy, the book does not distinguish clearly enough the two concepts, raising the doubt that the author considers them substantially synonyms. Instead one can recognize the importance of the merit and, at the same time, be resolutely against a meritocratic society. Secondly, the book underestimates the difficulty or impossibility of measuring many kinds of virtues. Indeed not for everything one can draw up rankings. Moreover the virtue should often be its own prize. In the book, finally, too much emphasis is placed on merits and too little on needs and luck. And, at the same time, it mistakes the language of merits for the one of needs. To claim that the needy deserve to be helped means to think in retribuitive terms even in situations in which the distribution should be independent of previous deserving actions.