Meritocracy presents itself as pure justice: each one receives what they deserve, triumphs by effort, and rises through merit. But what does this narrative conceal? What does it transform into personal guilt in order to deny structural inequality? This book offers a philosophical journey through these silent layers: merit as morality, effort as symbolic obligation, failure as personal defect.

More than a system of reward, meritocracy becomes language, aesthetic, and a tool for shaping the self. The deeper it embeds itself, the harder it becomes to question: privilege turns into virtue, and suffering becomes a lack of value. This critique goes beyond economics — it reaches ethics, education, emotion, labor, and the way one exists.

To reflect on the faith in meritocracy is to confront what has been lost along the way: the common, the unconditional dignity, a justice not tied to evaluation. And what may ultimately appear is not just an unjust system — but a seductive and exhausting belief that keeps us running, even when the destination is no longer clear.