Tales of Merit, Inequality and Hubris. Grigore Alexandrescu as a Critic of Meritocracy and the Enlightening Potential of the Fable in Populist Times

The present article opens with a brief remark on populism. And yet it is neither about populism nor about political events. It is simply about an important challenge that arises from populism – the need to bridge the gap between winners and losers in a meritocratic society. By using Michael Sandel’s critique of meritocratic pride (hubris) to interpret two representative fables of nineteenth-century Romanian poet Grigore Alexandrescu (“The Ox and the Calf” and “The Dog and the Puppy”), I mainly seek to draw attention to Alexandrescu as a critic of meritocracy and to reassert the actuality of the fable, i.e. its utility in cultivating a strong sense of community from an early age, by drawing on German Enlightenment thinkers such as Johann Christoph Gottsched and Christian Wolff.