Merit transference and the paradox of merit inflation

• Main Author: HAMMERTON, Matthew
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2023
• Subjects: merit transference; merit; demerit; karma; moral worth; Buddhism; parochial altruism; Asian Studies; Ethics and Political Philosophy; Religion
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/3793; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soss_research/article/5051/viewcontent/MeritTransference_sv.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Many religious traditions and ethical systems hold that individuals accrue merit through their good intentions, acts, and character, and demerit through their bad intentions, acts, and character. This merit and demerit, accumulated by individuals throughout their lives, gives each person a kind of ethical “score” that can determine what they deserve, and influence whether good or bad things happen to them (e.g., divine punishments and rewards, a favourable or unfavourable rebirth, etc.). In some traditions (most notably Buddhism, but also to a limited extent in Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity), “merit transference” is a feature of these merit-based ethical systems. This involves an individual, or group of individuals, transferring someof the merit they have earned to someone else, allowing the receiver to improve their ethical “score”. In this article, I argue that merit transference, in its standard interpretation, is paradoxical. It allows for a phenomenon I call “merit inflation”, which appears to undermine the moral relevance of merit and demerit. I initially focus my discussion on merit transference as it is practiced in the Buddhist tradition. After revealing the paradox, I examine several ways of resolving it and comment on their viability. I conclude by broadening my discussion to all ethical systems that allow for the possibility of merit transference.