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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 April 2017
The concept of need plays a significant but still relatively unexplored role in philosophy. In September 2003 The Royal Institute of Philosophy funded a conference held at Hatfield College, Durham, England, where philosophers from around the world devoted an enjoyable weekend to further exploration.1 In everyday political life, scepticism about the importance of needs seems to be abating, perhaps reflecting an increased confidence among needs-theorists, grounded in years of painstaking analysis and argument on the margins of mainstream philosophy. This increased confidence freed participants at the conference to work less defensively and more constructively, and to extend their depth and range of their work. One happy result is that new aspects of the philosophy of need are identified and explored in this volume.
1 Thanks to the Royal Institute of Philosophy for funding the conference, and to Anthony O'Hear, James Garvey and everyone else at the Institute who helped for their generous and timely help with the final preparation of this manuscript for publication. I would also like to thank everyone who came to the conference, and those bodies which contributed extra funding: the Aristotelian Society, the Mind Association, and the Analysis Trust (who provided funds to enable graduates to attend). Staff at Hatfield College also helped to make it a memorable event.
2 See for example the work of Dharam Ghai and others at the ILO in the 1970s, and the further work by Streeten, Paul, Stewart, Frances, Hurki, S J, Haq, Mahbub ul and Hicks, Norman for the world bank, which resulted in First Things First (Oxford: Oxford University Press World Bank Research Publication, 1982)Google Scholar.
3 Brock, G., Necessary Goods (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998), 2Google Scholar.
4 See Wiggins, D., ‘Claims of Need’ in Needs, Values, Truth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 1–57Google Scholar., and Thomson, G., Needs (London: Routledge, 1987)Google Scholar.
5 Several philosophers address these issues in their contributions to Necessary Goods and elsewhere, including David Wiggins, Onora O'Neill, Robert Goodin, David Braybrooke, Gillian Brock and James Sterba.
6 See for example David Braybrooke's work, particularly Meeting Needs (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987)Google ScholarPubMed, the work of Paul Streeten in First Things First and elsewhere, and that of Frances Stewart, Len Doyal, Ian Gough and Des Gasper.
7 Most analytic writing on need pays considerable attention to sceptical doubts. In ‘Claims of Need’ David Wiggins addresses a particularly wide range of doubts.
8 Brock's veil of ignorance is structurally and procedurally similar to Rawls’ well-known one, but Brock makes different assumptions, and so draws different conclusions, to Rawls.
9 Frohlich, N. and Oppenheimer, J., Choosing Justice: An Empirical Approach to Ethical Theory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992)Google Scholar.
10 If Wiggins is right, in place of classical Utilitarianism, Hare would have had a needs-based ethic; in place of the difference principle, Rawls would have a principle of needs-meeting, and economists using the precautionary principle would have had to acknowledge their reliance on a concept they claim to dispense with in favour of preference.
11 Lowe's account of the relationship between the logic of action and the logic of belief is reminiscent of G E M Anscombe's arguments, where she refers to the shared structure as ‘the great Aristotelian parallel’. But Lowe goes further than Anscombe, who does not see any special role for need, and does not attend to the metaphysical problems that might be raised by taking practical reasons to be facts. See Anscombe, G. E. M., ‘Practical Inference’, in Virtues and Reasons, ed. by Hursthouse, , Lawrence, and Quinn, , (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 1–34Google Scholar.
12 Dancy, Jonathan has made this kind of point in Practical Reality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000)Google Scholar, and more recently in correspondence.
13 O'Neill, O. ‘Rights, Obligations and Needs’, Necessary Goods, Brock, G. (ed.) (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998), 95–112Google Scholar.
14 Ibid., 12.
15 Brock, Gillian and I argue in ‘Needs-centered Ethics’ (Journal of Value Inquiry, 2002, 425–434.)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and in ‘Needs, Moral Demands and Moral Theory’ (Utilitas, 2004, 251–266.) that talk of need is indispensable to any adequate normative moral theory. This entails that both rights-based and obligation-based deontological theories must mention needs; but it leaves open a possibility we mention but have not yet explored, that any rightsor obligation-based theory (or indeed a value- or virtue-based one) might actually be replaceable without remainder, by a comprehensive normative theory based on need.
16 Braybrooke has long argued that the concept of need has an important role to play in political deliberation, where it functions well as a surrogate for utility. A surrogate for utility is needed, Braybrooke argues, because contra the claims of economists, the concept of utility is obscure and difficult to measure, whereas the concept of need is familiar, well-understood and relatively simple to measure. Over years, Braybrooke has developed a schema describing mechanisms which capture the moral importance of needs. His aim has been both descriptive and normative. As well as making explicit how the concept of essential need may function in actual political deliberation, the schema is also intended to offer a framework for reflection on political policies and priorities which Braybrooke recommends. The best-known presentation of his views is Meeting Needs (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987)Google ScholarPubMed.
17 Sen, A., Resources, Values and Development (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984), 509–532Google Scholar.
18 Thanks to Geraldine Coggins for pointing out this tension in the idea of a needs-based morality.
19 See for example Kittay, E. F., Love's Labour (London: Routledge, 1999)Google Scholar and Maclntyre, A., Dependent Rational Animals (London: Duckworth, 1999)Google Scholar.
20 Compelling arguments are offered for this claim in Herman, Judith, Trauma and Recovery (London: Pandora, 1992)Google Scholar.