In the essay, Merit: Why Do We Value It? Louis Pojman discusses the role and importance of merit and goodness in the life of people and the impact of merit on human relations and even historical events. Pojman underlines that merit is closely connected with morality and ethics, and can be opposed to desert and immorality. Merit then is opposed to human pride. Pride asserts its own status before for every individual. But at times this teaching has been called morally wrong because refusing to state requirements for the approach to the religion is said to discourage moral earnestness. Pojman underlines that “the virtuous are rewarded and the vicious punished in proportion to their relative deserts”. I agree with this statement because it can be seen as a core of moral and ethical principles so important for peace and happy life.
Merit should be rewarded as it brings happiness and support to other people. To the extent that one’s concern with moral principles is only with its external appearances, this may be so. To the extent that a person is concerned with what is fundamental to merit and goodness–the right relationship between a man and the world around, apart from which nothing can be right–to this extent the objection misses its point. When an individual regardless of his adherence to, or deviation from, conventional ethics recognizes his true relation to the good life and mutual sport, then for the first time he is confronted with truth and is responding validly to it. Pojman defines merit as “any feature o quality that is the basis for distributing positive attribution such as praise, rewards and prizes” (Pojman p. 86). Life should be organized based on merit as against desert is crucial. It is not a denial of all connection with the past. That is, the effects of the desert, especially those of a physical sort, cannot suddenly be negated.
We should strive to build a world in which vicious people are punished in accordance with evils and sins they commit. The aim of human life is happiness and pleasure which can be achieved by preventing evils and deserts. As the most important, all evils and deserts are committed by people not because of absolute necessity but because of envy and greediness. It is from this position of dependence, of accepting merit that life begins. The past goof deeds of a murderer will not restore the life of the individual he has killed nor do away with the complications that have followed on his act. The conversion of the ordinary citizen will not remove completely the patterns established in the past, the deeds that have been made, and the effects of them on his life. Vicious people should be punished because they “punished” innocent people and bring evil into this world. “The desert-based idea of justice has two parts. Every action in the universe has a fitting response, and that response must be appropriate in measure of the original action. It follows that evil deeds must follow by evil outcomes … exactly in proportion to the vice or virtue in question” (Pojman p. 96). Individual choices, significant as they are, cannot change the basic structure of the world. The universe and justice remain in supreme control over all actions. Evils do not deliver individuals from justice and universal truth. But this justice is now seen as being at radically cross-purposes with own interests. The world cannot function as a separate entity with multiple centers of power, hence the result of an attempt to establish life apart from justice is continual frustration within ourselves, in individual social relations, and in nature as well.
We should strive to build a world in which vicious people are punished because the essence of life is merit. Merit can be seen as a strong power that builds the world and improves it. In contrast, the desert can be seen as a negative force that ruins the world and human life. Evils and bad deeds should be viewed as the problem of a natural order inherently at odds with human efforts to achieve merit. Primarily is this so when we try to learn from the experiences of life. Any attempt to be taught involves the assumption that there is some order outside our life to which individuals must conform. Being virtues, people would welcome the opportunity to learn. The good life and merits are a response in obedience and faith to universal justice: it is living according to the universal order. And it finds its justification not in its success, judged by worldly principles in a world which does not wholly acknowledge justice and happiness, but in the power of merit and the redemption is given in religion. The possibility of this transformation is found in good deeds. Far from its being an individual accomplishment, to benefit from it people must acknowledge their impotence and follow the goodness which creates a new relationship and gives people new insight into ourselves, relations with other people, and the problems which desert has left people. “Useful behavior is reinforced by rewards and so, in the evolutionary development of species, has been selected for” (Pojman p. 1000).
In sum, merit is the core of good life and justice, so all evil actions and bad deeds should be punished. Merit demonstrates that relations between individuals are more than this–in fact, there must be self-giving on both sides. The confidence of faith in the recognition of this insufficiency suggests why so often merit is more apt to be generated in the individual who is aware of his goodness to claim moral values rather than in the relatively righteous person. The acceptance of merit means a forthright recognition of the good life and good deeds of ever making things right.
References
Pojman, L. Merit: Why Do We Value It?.