Merit occupies a contested and generative position across the depth-psychology corpus, appearing at the intersection of value, desert, responsibility, and salvation. The most sustained treatment emerges from Arthur Adkins’s philological study of Greek values, where merit is inseparable from the concept of aretē—a term whose force lies not in moral intention but in demonstrated excellence, results, and social recognition. For Adkins, merit in the Homeric world is fundamentally competitive and results-oriented: one is agathos by what one achieves, not by what one intends. This stands in sharp contrast to the theological discourse of merit found in Christian sources, where Coniaris’s presentation of Orthodox spirituality explicitly repudiates ‘merit theology’—the Latin-inflected notion that good works accumulate credit toward salvation—insisting instead on the gratuity of divine grace. William James observes that the Roman Church institutionalized hardship into a ‘market-value in the shape of merit,’ a commodification of ascetic effort that James treats with characteristic ambivalence. Campbell locates merit within Buddhist-adjacent Indian religiosity as a category organizing cosmological reward. Benveniste traces the Indo-European roots of merit to exchange value and the worth of persons in economies of capture and sale. Collectively, these voices reveal merit as a term that triangulates value, agency, and reward—whether in the agon of Greek aristocratic culture, the ledger-logic of soteriological theology, or the karmic economies of Asian thought.
The Development of the Concept of Moral Responsibility from Homer to Aristotle… a discussion of a very limited range of Greek words. All these words hav
Adkins’s foundational work treats merit as inseparable from the Greek lexicon of value and responsibility, arguing that the concept is best approached through precise philological analysis of a limited set of evaluative terms.
, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values, 1960thesis
In no way must it ever be imagined that our free response to God earns us merit… the Orthodox Church has never been bedeviled with ‘merit’ theology whereby each good deed earns credit(s) toward one’s salvation.
Coniaris argues that Orthodox Christianity categorically rejects merit theology as a Latin deformation, insisting that salvation is a free gift of grace rather than a wage earned through accumulated deeds.
, Philokalia: The Bible of Orthodox Spirituality, 1998thesis
‘merit’ is the personal ‘value’ of a human being. Thanks to Greek we may bring the notion of personal ‘merit’ into connection with ‘value,’ the latter being associated with verbs signifying ‘to buy’ and ‘to sell.’
Benveniste’s etymological analysis reveals that merit, understood as personal value, has deep roots in Indo-European economies of exchange, purchase, and the valuation of persons as commodities.
, Indo European Language and Society, 1973thesis
The Roman Church has organized and codified all this sort of thing, and given it a market-value in the shape of ‘merit.’
James observes that institutional religion—specifically Roman Catholicism—converted the spontaneous cultivation of hardship into a systemized economy of merit, effectively assigning exchange value to ascetic practice.
, The Varieties of Religious Experience Amazon, 1902supporting
mention whatsoever is made of the doctrines of no-self, ignorance, and extinction, but only of heaven, good works, merit, and the soul… ‘the ceremonial of piety is not temporal; for even if it fails to attain the desired end in this world, it surely begets eternal merit in the next.’
Campbell documents that popular Indian religiosity—distinct from the more austere metaphysical doctrines—operated through a cosmological economy of merit in which good works and piety accumulated reward across lives and worlds.
, Oriental Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume II, 1962supporting
The noun aretē, with the adjective agathos… are, as will be demonstrated below, the most powerful words of commendation used of a man both in Homer and in later Greek.
Adkins establishes that the Greek vocabulary of merit is anchored in aretē and agathos, terms whose evaluative power sets the framework within which any account of human desert or worth must be articulated.
, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values, 1960thesis
agathos and arete were reckoned by results rather than intentions, and reasons were given for this. The attitude, together with the reasons, still holds.
Adkins argues that Greek merit-evaluation is consistently consequentialist, judging a person’s worth by outcomes and achievements rather than by the moral quality of intentions.
, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values, 1960supporting
In order that I might be thought beltiōn, better, by you and, should some misfortune overtake me… I should have a better chance in court… To spend money in order to be thought ‘better’ and have a better chance of success in lawsuits.
Adkins demonstrates that the accumulation of merit through public liturgies was an explicitly instrumental strategy in Athenian legal culture, where social worth could be converted into juridical advantage.
, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values, 1960supporting
the emergence of a new kind of aretē—a use, that is, of the highest term of value to commend a new kind of activity… arete has always commended the abi
Adkins traces how the concept of merit expanded historically to encompass new forms of civic and intellectual excellence, with the highest evaluative term aretē being adapted to legitimate newly valued competencies.
, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values, 1960supporting
In these one may see the arete of the donors, in the former only the wealth of the spenders. Such services are expressions of arete: this cannot be denied. Hence those who perform them are agathoi, and have claims upo
Adkins shows that genuine public service was recognized as an expression of merit that conferred legitimate claims upon the community, distinguishing true aretē from mere conspicuous expenditure.
, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values, 1960supporting
Any change in a society’s view of this concept, any change… in the group of actions or types of action held by that society to be responsible actions, will result from a change in other beliefs.
Adkins situates merit within a broader theory of moral responsibility, arguing that what counts as meritorious action is determined by shifting social beliefs and conditions rather than timeless moral categories.
, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values, 1960supporting
merit and, 63… karma, 437n192… rebirth and, 125, 185, 331
An index entry from Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō Zuimonki links merit to karma and rebirth, situating it within the Buddhist framework where accumulated merit conditions future existence.
, Shōbōgenzō Zuimonki, 1234aside
Skt. arhat ‘a man of particular merit’ brings confirmation of this ancient sense. With the Germans, the custom of selling a man who had staked and lost his liberty in gambling, enables us to understand how the sense of ‘sell’
Benveniste uses the Sanskrit arhat to confirm that the Indo-European concept of personal merit originated in the exchange-value assigned to human beings within social economies of purchase and captivity.
, Indo European Language and Society, 1973supporting
At the cornerstone of gratitude is the notion of undeserved merit. The grateful person recognizes that he or she did nothing to deserve the gift or benefit; it was freely bestowed.
Konstan observes that ancient Greek gratitude is structurally defined by the absence of merit—the gift is precisely what was not earned—placing merit and gratuity in constitutive opposition.
, The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks: Studies in Aristotle and Classical Literature, 2006aside
one ‘ought’ in one’s own interest to pursue a course of action which is likely to lead to one’s success, but one can have no duty to succeed, and hence no duty to be an agathos, for so many of the defining characteristics—success, wealth, &c.—do not depend on the will of the individual alone.
Adkins identifies a fundamental tension in Greek merit-thinking: because merit is reckoned by outcomes partly beyond individual control, the concept resists conversion into a categorical moral duty.
, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values, 1960aside