## 1. The normativity of need




The role that needs should play in our practical reasoning is a hotly
contested topic. On one side stand philosophers who argue that the
needs of others always impose moral demands on us, or more strongly
still that the very idea of moral obligation cannot be understood
except with reference to needs (see Reader 2007, chs. 4-5; Weil
1952, 3-9). They are also likely to believe that meeting
needs should be a primary aim of public policy. On the other side
stand philosophers who argue that needs are a false currency; they
appear to be both objective and fundamental, but in fact are neither,
since claims of need always make tacit reference to some further end
for which the thing claimed is necessary (Barry 1965, 47-9;
Flew 1981, ch. 5; White 1975, ch. 8). Moreover in politics, appeals to
need are not only misleading, but dangerous, because the obligations
they apparently impose can serve to justify indefinitely expanding the
scope of government at the expense of individual freedom (Minogue
1963, ch. 4).




How should we respond to this contest? It is tempting to sidestep the
controversy over needs by substituting other concepts that cover some
of the same terrain but are viewed as less contestable--such as
resources, welfare, or capabilities--and as we shall see later,
needs have played a smaller part than one might expect in recent
political philosophy. Yet there remains something compelling about the
idea of need. To say that a human being is in need--is ill, or
starving, or threatened by danger--seems on the face of it to
identify a state of affairs that calls for immediate remedy. In
everyday life, the language of need is pervasive. We talk constantly
of the needs of children, the elderly, the poor, the sick, the lonely,
and so on. We should not be too quick, therefore, to assume that
needs-talk can easily be replaced by some other idiom. Instead we
should try to understand how the controversy has arisen, and whether
it can be resolved by more careful specification of the needs claims
that have non-derivative practical force.


### 1.1 Are Need Claims always Elliptical?




A good place to start is with the question whether claims of the form
'\(A\) needs \(X\)' are always elliptical, that is whether
they are always opaque unless filled out by supplying the end, \(Y\),
for which \(X\) is needed. Clearly many need statements have that
property. If I say 'Mary needs a hat', then unless the
context makes it clear already, it is apposite to ask 'What does
she need the hat for?' to which the answer might be 'To
avoid getting sunburnt'. Yet other need claims seem not to be
elliptical in that way. If I say 'the baby needs its diaper
changed', it would be more than a little bizarre to ask
'what for?'. Although it would no doubt be possible
formally to expand the sentence by specifying a goal, no fresh
information would be supplied to anyone who already knew what a baby
was and what a diaper was, whereas in the case of Mary's hat,
the reference to sunburn does genuine explanatory work by displacing
other reasons that Mary might have for needing suitable headgear.




It matters whether or not all need statements are elliptical because
this is connected to the further question whether need claims can have
independent justificatory force. For those who deny this, such as
Barry, the fact that need claims always require spelling out in the
form '\(A\) needs \(X\) in order to \(Y\)' shows that what
matters normatively are always the \(Y\) items, the ends for which the
things needed are necessary. Barry concedes that there are
'core' cases of human need where the context makes it
clear that the ends being invoked fall within a narrow range (health,
for instance), yet concludes that 'this modification does not
affect my thesis that no special account has to be taken of
"need", for it is still derivative and the only
interesting questions arise in connection with the ends' (Barry
1965, 49).




Others, however, deny this. For Wiggins, the problem with the claim
that all need claims are elliptical is that it blurs the distinction
between the instrumental sense of 'need', where the
purpose for which the claimed item is needed might be almost anything,
and the categorical sense where 'the purpose is already fixed,
and fixed by virtue of the meaning of the word' (Wiggins 1998,
9). In the case of categorical needs, needed items are things that
human beings must have to avoid being harmed, but it is a mistake to
see 'avoidance of harm' as a further end that explains why
the need is a need; instead it is already present in the idea of need
itself. A similar argument is made by Thomson (1987), though using a
different vocabulary of derivative and basic needs. Of course these
analyses of the concept of need do not yet tell us what our
categorical or basic needs are. It is uncontroversial to say that the
resources without which a human being could not survive, such as food
and water, count as needs. But how far beyond this does the concept
stretch? Could needs that only some people have count as categorical,
for example? We return to this question in section 3 below when we
discuss different substantive theories of need.


### 1.2 Needs and Moral Obligation




Consider next the alleged normative force of need claims. They are
often singled out for discussion because on the one hand whether
somebody has a need seems to be a matter of fact, while on the other
the existence of the need once established seems to constitute a
reason for acting so as to fulfil it. If John, who has a migraine,
needs a painkiller (matter of fact), then I have a reason to give him
one (normative reason). So needs serve as a bridge between
'is' and 'ought'. Yet leaving aside general
doubts as to whether such bridge-building is possible, we need to
tread cautiously here. First, the thesis is only plausible in the case
of categorical needs. In the case of instrumental needs, everything
will turn on the end for which the needed item is required. An
arsonist may need a match to start a fire, but there is no reason to
hand him one. Second, even categorical needs only provide reasons for
action when the need is presently unfulfilled. So we need to draw a
distinction between 'occurrent' and
'dispositional' needs (Thomson 1987, 11-12;
Reader 2007, 71). A dispositional need is a general need that human
beings have, like the need for sleep. But whether a person has an
occurrent need for sleep depends on whether he has just woken up after
a good night's rest or on the contrary has been unable to sleep
for the last twenty-four hours. It is only in the latter case, where
the need is occurrent, that others have a reason to meet it by
offering the sleep-deprived person a bed to lie on.




What kinds of reason for action do basic needs create? Needs are
sometimes described as 'morally demanding', and therefore
as directly generating moral obligations on the part of those who can
fulfil them (Reader 2007, chs. 4-6). But what kind of
obligation? Some philosophers writing in defence of care ethics take
responding to need as the paradigm case of, or even definitive of, a
caring relationship. For Bubeck, for example, 'caring for is the
meeting of the needs of one person by another person where
face-to-face interaction between carer and cared for is a crucial
element of the overall activity and where the need is of such a nature
that it cannot possibly be met by the person in need herself'
(Bubeck 1995, 129). This is echoed by Held (2006, 10):
'the central focus of the ethics of care is on the compelling
moral salience of attending to and meeting the needs of the particular
others for whom we take responsibility'. However it would be a
mistake to think that needs only have moral relevance in the context
of caring relationships, even if it is within those relationships that
they can be responded to most fully. For meeting needs is also
sometimes demanded as a matter of justice: we explore the relationship
between needs and justice more fully in section 4 below. We can see
this most clearly in circumstances where resources are not plentiful
enough to meet everyone's needs in full. Then we face the
problem of how to distribute them, and the principle we use to solve
it will be a principle of justice. 'To each according to their
needs' has over the last two centuries often been held up as the
highest principle of distributive justice, although as we shall see in
section 5 there are a number of different ways in which the
requirement to distribute scarce resources
*according* to need can be interpreted. Those who want to
defend the supremacy of care as a moral value acknowledge that justice
of this kind must have a place within caring relationships (Held 2006,
ch. 4). The caring parent, for instance, must pay equal attention
to the various different needs of each of his or her children.


### 1.3 The Significance of Relationships




Where a caring relationship already exists, it is easy to identify the
person who has the moral obligation to meet another's needs, but
this raises the question whether needs as such can impose obligations
on those who have the means to satisfy them, or whether there must
already be a pre-existing relationship that explains why Alfred has an
obligation to meet Betty's needs. Reader (2007, 72) defends
the view that 'need only constitutes an actual moral demand in
the context of a moral relationship'. But she is obliged to
stretch the idea of a moral relationship to deal with emergency
situations in which we intuitively think that rescuers are obliged to
come to the aid of complete strangers when they can do so at little
cost. She does so by arguing that 'encounters', even very
brief ones, should count as a form of moral relationship (Reader 2007,
 74-5). This, however, is implausible if it is intended to
include cases such as those in which the person in need is unaware of
the presence of her saviour (for example because she is lying
unconscious). The relationship between rescuer and victim here
consists simply in the former's physical capacity to carry out
the rescue at small cost: there is no person-to-person encounter
between them prior to the rescue itself. So if we think that the
rescuer in such cases does have an obligation to meet the needs of the
victim, then we must concede that human need alone can impose
obligations in the absence of any further relationship between the two
parties.




A more nuanced view here would hold that it is only cases of extreme
need--where life itself or serious bodily harm is at
stake--that can create such obligations between perfect
strangers. Where needs are less severe--for example our
psychological needs for love or moral support--the obligation to
meet them falls only on those already connected to the person in
need. There is a parallel here to the debate in political morality
about the obligations of states to meet the needs of those inside and
outside their borders, respectively. One view is that states are
required to meet a quite extensive set of needs on the part of their
own citizens (including, for example, needs for elaborate and
expensive forms of medical treatment), whereas their obligations to
outsiders are more limited, and confined to cases such as famine or
epidemic where lives are at risk. Others would challenge this
distinction, and argue that where needs are at stake states have a
duty to be impartial, so that if state \(S\) is for some reason unable
to meet the extensive needs of its own citizens, other states have a
 duty to step in and fill the gap (See 
 global justice).


## 2. Skepticism about Needs and Common Response Strategies




Many kinds of concerns have been raised about needs playing an
important role in moral and political philosophy. We might divide
these into two main categories. The first category focuses on whether
or not we can identify clear criteria for *determining* needs,
in particular those needs that are capable of playing such a role. In
the second category the common theme is the inadequacy of need as a
guide to our moral or political obligations. In the first part of this
section we canvass some of these common concerns and in section 2.3
review some common response strategies.


### 2.1 Insufficiently Objective


#### 2.1.1 Are we Able to Compose a List of Needs that is Sufficiently Objective to Ground Relevant Obligations?




For need to play the fundamental normative role that its advocates
envisage, it seems essential that there should be a consensus on what
people really need. However, looking around at what people
*claim* to need, we seem to be confronted with diverse,
sometimes conflicting, possibilities. Consider, for instance, how
members of a Bedouin tribe may claim to need some camels, pita bread,
good copies of the Koran, and swords, in order to live a minimally good
life. By contrast, so-called Millennials living in New York might claim
that good Internet access, technological connectivity, and reliable
mass transit systems are fundamental to their well-being. The
concern here is that we will be unable to derive one robust list of
needs that captures this variety, and is applicable to all
people. Even if we limit our focus to one particular society we
will note that there is still enormous variety in what people claim to
need. Some may claim to be unable to enjoy life without music,
art, long walks in natural habitats, or a large group of like-minded
friends. Others might see no value in this list of reported
essentials. Faced with such claims, how can real needs be
identified?


#### 2.1.2 Can Needs be Sharply Distinguished from Desires, Wants or Preferences?




Philosophers who write about the concept of need are keen to emphasize
how needs differ from desires, wants, and preferences: we often want
things that we do not need, and equally we may not want what we need
because we fail to recognize its importance to us (all of this seems
abundantly clear when we observe the eating patterns of many young
children). Since, in general, we only have weak reasons to satisfy
people's desires and preferences, this contrast seems important
if we want to maintain that meeting claims of need is morally
obligatory (see e.g. Miller 2014, 20-22).




Yet on further reflection we may begin to doubt whether such a
categorical separation between needs and wants is feasible. This
relates back to the first set of concerns already mentioned in
2.1.1. We might observe that some things we once considered to be more
aptly described as preferences, desires or wants have widely come to
be thought of as needs. Examples of this phenomenon might include
access to computers, the Internet, television sets, refrigeration, and
central heating, which are widely thought of as among the necessities
of modern life. Given these changes over time concerning what is
regarded as a need, the suspicion may arise that a need is nothing
more than a desire whose satisfaction has become socially expected,
and therefore lacks the special moral force that its defenders claim
for it. 


### 2.2 The Undesirability of Distribution According to Need




Needs as grounds of distribution might be attacked by those who are
keen to promote the virtues of self-reliance, self-sufficiency, and
social independence. Rather than demanding of others that they should
meet our needs, an objector might maintain that we should transcend
our neediness, associated as it is with weakness, frailty,
vulnerability, and other pathetic parts of our nature. Attending to
need can be debilitating for both giver and receiver, on this line of
objection. On the giver's part, the demandingness of need is
felt to threaten her capacity to carry out her own plan of
life. Emerson gave vent to this thought:



> 
> 
> 
> Do not tell me, as a good man did today, of my obligation to put all
> poor men in good situations. Are they *my* poor? I tell thee,
> thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the
> cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not
> belong (Emerson 1901, 59).
> 
> 




On the receiver's side, being dependent on others to meet our
needs renders us subservient to them. Consider Adam Smith's
remark:



> 
> 
> 
> Nothing tends so much to corrupt and enervate and debase the mind as
> dependency, and nothing gives such noble and generous notions of
> probity as freedom and independence (Smith 1982 (originally
> 1762-1763), 333).
> 
> 




For Smith, commercial exchange in a free market serves to prevent the
noted vices. Markets foster self-reliance, social independence, and
exchange among equals, freeing us from relations of dominance,
subservience, and servility.




In addition, if the state is in the business of attending to
people's needs, this raises the spectre of a bureaucratic, nanny
state fostering one-sided dependence among citizens. The idea of
distribution according to need, it is said, invokes or lends itself to
a passive conception of agency. Those to whom goods are distributed
will be seen as recipients of the state's largesse. More
worrisomely, the beneficiaries themselves may come to abandon the
attempt to meet their own needs, as state policies promote a culture
of dependence. This is destructive of people's own sense of
their agency and empowerment, and destructive of the very ethos a good
society should be promoting. We should instead be encouraging people
to take responsibility for their own well-being.


#### 2.2.1 Paternalism and Abuse




Critics argue that using need as a criterion of distribution lends
itself to paternalism, authoritarianism, or abuse. To ensure parity of
treatment, an outside agency must decide what needs different people
have. But it may seem instead that people should be allowed the
freedom to decide for themselves what their needs are, how they should
matter, and what weight should attach to them compared with other
considerations that might subjectively seem more important. Griffin
gives the example of a group of scholars having to choose between an
extension to their library and exercise equipment to promote their
health (Griffin 1986, 45). The latter can be construed as a need,
whereas the former is only an informed desire, since it depends on
aims that are peculiar to the scholarly community. Yet, Griffin
argues, it would be odd to say that there is an obligation to provide
the equipment that the scholars value less in preference to the
resource that they value more. As those whose wellbeing is at issue,
the scholars should be the ones to make judgements about how to weigh
their needs with other core aspects of their wellbeing. 




In short, distributing in accordance with needs allows too many
opportunities for outsiders to get these matters wrong or to act
paternalistically with regard to those they aim to assist. It is best
to have individuals be in charge of managing their needs in the
contexts of their own lives.


#### 2.2.2 Bottomless Pits




Here the charge is that, once we think of needs as imposing
obligations on us, there will be too many for us to satisfy. Some will
be especially demanding. Consider how many medical needs are in this
category, such as needs for renal dialysis machines or needs
associated with organ transplantation. Even to attempt to meet all of
them would be excessively burdensome on those who are required to
assist, whether as charity donors or taxpayers.




There are at least two kinds of concerns associated with this
"bottomless pit" worry. Reflecting, for instance, on the
cost of meeting medical needs within most high-income countries and
the fact that healthcare budgets are under significant pressures (even
though reasonably high proportions of public resources are allocated
to healthcare), it seems that we cannot satisfy *all* the
healthcare needs that present themselves within our societies. Given
scientific and technical advances, there will be an indefinitely large
number of possible new treatments to promote the quality of life and
to prolong it. So since the healthcare budget is finite, and limited
by competing demands on public funds, it seems that in this area needs
are in principle insatiable: there will always be more that we might
do to fulfil them.




This in principle insatiability concern can easily transform into an
overdemandingness concern if we extend the scope of the needs that we
have a responsibility to meet to other societies besides our own.
Consider the vast number of people across the planet who have unmet
needs for healthcare alone, never mind all the other domains in which
their needs go unfulfilled. One might easily conclude that if needs
have normative force, we will be overwhelmed by the apparent
bottomless pits of needs that exist globally.


### 2.3 Common Strategies for Responding to such Skepticism




Many philosophers have engaged with these kinds of objections. One
strategy frequently used to address concerns related to a lack of
objectivity is to argue that what counts as a need, especially one
that is to have normative importance, can be decided in principled
ways (e.g. Braybrooke 1987, Doyal and Gough 1991, Wiggins 1987).
Various authors delineate the principles differently though there is
also important convergence and overlap, as we discuss in section 3
below. A common theme is that the needs that are normatively salient,
especially in political distribution, are those that are necessary,
indispensable, or inescapable, given the kinds of creatures that we
are and the requirements for functioning in social settings.




All authors grapple somewhat with the level at which we should specify
what it is people need. While reflection on our common humanity might
well be an important source of understanding about what humans need,
to articulate that more precisely we need to engage with particular
social contexts to flesh out any lists that will apply within
particular societies and have purchase in policy matters. One common
distinction in the literature is to differentiate between needs and
their satisfiers. The idea is that we can give a fairly high-level
statement of our human needs, but for particular societies we will
often require a more specific account of what forms the satisfiers could
take in those societal contexts. So to illustrate, we might say that
all people need sufficient health and sufficient protection from
environmental hazards. To specify what that amounts to for members of
particular societies, we need to examine threats to health
in *particular* environments (along with whatever general ones
also apply to all human beings). Consider how prudent precautions for
Inuit will differ from those that are recommended in societies where
mosquito-borne illnesses are rampant (even if it is also true that a
number of similar precautions apply to both). And this will be the
case for all our human needs. Even when we make claims about our human
needs, the forms that satisfying those needs may take in particular
societies can admit of huge variation.




So, differentiating between needs and their satisfiers plays an
important role in explaining some of the diversity we see reflected
around the world, along with some of the diversity we see within
societies. Consider an intra-societal example. While we all might have
a need for appropriate recreation, the form this takes may well
vary. For some, recreational needs are satisfied by listening to
music, while for others nothing short of mountain walking will do. So
while some people claim that they couldn't possibly live without
music, and other say the same about walking in the mountains, what
they are disagreeing about is satisfiers rather than basic human
needs. They can agree that there is a need for recreation even if they
disagree about the form satisfaction of the need should take for
them.




Another distinction that can often account for other examples of
apparent diversity is also worth mentioning. As David Braybrooke
suggests, there is a difference between 'adventitious
needs' and 'course-of-life' needs (Braybrooke 1987,
29). Adventitious needs are those that become important given a
certain project, practice, or activity. But within one society not all
citizens may wish to undertake those activities. The needs may not be
shared by all, even if it is true that the item claimed to be needed
is indeed essential to undertake that activity. By contrast, a
course-of-life need is one that is widely shared and is not dependent
on particular projects; during the course of human lives lived in that
society, one typically needs items on the list.




In response to the concerns that distribution according to need is
undesirable because it lends itself to paternalism, authoritarianism,
undesirable conceptions of agency, or overwhelming demands, a common
approach is to point out that each of the objections makes dispensable
assumptions. For instance, why assume that the individuals whose needs
are a target of policy will not play a role in the relevant
determinations of what they need, how these might best be satisfied,
or other important features of needs policy? In fact, on several
important accounts, the decision procedures concerning how to settle
questions of need should include a range of individuals, including
those in need (Braybrooke 1987, Doyal and Gough 1991). So distribution
according to need is not automatically vulnerable to charges of
paternalism, and the like. Particular decision-making procedures for
arriving at policies about needs may well be characterized in these
terms, but this is not an inevitable feature of all such policies.




The concern about being overwhelmed by a bottomless pit of
needs-related responsibilities can be deflated similarly using various
strategies. One is to point out that claims of need might have
variable importance depending on key features such as the
relationships among relevant parties, resources available, and the
burdens that meeting them would place on others (e.g. Copp 1998, Brock
2009). And, of course, the issue of responsibilities that needs
generate and how to distribute responsibilities for meeting needs is
an enormous topic (e.g., Braybrooke 1987, Miller 1999, Miller 2007),
one that will be discussed below (for instance, in sections 4 and 5).
For now, it is worth pointing out that we need not assume what this
objection does, namely that meeting needs is an all or nothing affair,
so that either needs have normative force (in which case they have too
much) or else they can have none at all.


## 3. Some Influential Accounts of the Normatively Salient Needs




Philosophers have suggested various ways to identify the needs that
warrant normative attention. While there are several common elements
in these accounts, they also reveal important differences. We review
here five of the more prominent accounts in the philosophical
literature on needs.




Harry Frankfurt (1984) asks how needs must be understood if they are
to have the special moral significance that we attribute to them
relative to mere desires. He argues that we must distinguish between
free volitional needs, where an item is needed only to satisfy a
desire over which a person has control--he could choose not to
have it; constrained volitional needs, where an item is needed to
satisfy a desire a person cannot rid himself of, such as an
addiction; and non-volitional needs that are entirely independent of
desires, such as a sick person's need for medicine. Only in the
case of the latter two categories of need will a person be harmed by
being denied what she needs, Frankfurt argues, and it is only these
needs that have the special moral force that the language of
'need' is usually understood to convey.




Harm arising from factors beyond one's control is also central
to why needs matter, when they do, on David Wiggins's account
(1987, 1998). Wiggins develops these ideas and introduces various
terms to reflect central features of the concept. There is the gravity
of the harm that would ensue if the need is not met
('*badness*'), which is different from the
*urgency* to prevent harm from ensuing. Needs may be
*entrenched* when they are inflexible to modification, or
*substitutable* when they are not. A need is *basic* if
it results from a law of nature, an unalterable and invariable
environmental fact, or a fact about human constitution. Using this
terminology, Wiggins defines vital needs as ones that are bad in a way
that is entrenched and scarcely substitutable, and it is these vital
needs that matter morally according to him.




David Braybrooke (1987) develops an account of basic needs that
connects needs to social functioning. For Braybrooke something is a
basic need if, without its satisfaction, one would be unable to carry
out four basic social roles, namely, those of citizen, parent,
householder, and worker. By reflecting on what is needed to have the
genuine choice to adopt the role or carry out tasks associated with
it, we can arrive at a list of needs. To assist in this process he
also examines several proposed lists and extracts many common elements
that, over the course of a life, are necessary for the four roles he
identifies as important. Focusing on what humans typically do (through
consideration of these roles) provides Braybrooke with a good
reference point for compiling this list. The needs that make the list
are the need for a life-supporting relation to the environment; for
whatever is indispensable to preserving the body intact in important
respects (including food, water, exercise, and periodic rest); for
companionship; for education; for social acceptance and recognition;
for sexual activity; for recreation; and for freedom from harassment,
including not being continually frightened.




Len Doyal and Ian Gough (1991) offer a highly influential account that
aims to connect philosophical and empirical disciplines. On their
view, needs are universalizable preconditions that enable non-impaired
participation in any form of life. Physical health and autonomy (by
which they mean the mental competence to deliberate and choose) are
the two basic needs. An additional class of intermediate needs connect
these two basic needs with social science knowledge that can be useful
in measuring needs fulfilment. The intermediate needs are nutritious
food and clean water, protective housing, a non-hazardous work
environment, a non-hazardous physical environment, appropriate health
care, security in childhood, significant primary relationships,
physical security, economic security, appropriate education, safe
birth control, and safe child-bearing. Armed with these intermediate
needs they drill down even further, offering specific ideas about the
kinds of metrics we should adopt to help gain a sense of whether needs
are being met. These metrics are also helpful in measuring progress
with respect to meeting needs over time.




David Miller (1999, ch. 10; 2007, ch. 7) follows Wiggins conceptually
in defining needs as conditions that must be met if a person is not to
suffer harm. But the harm in question is not merely
physiological. Instead, on Miller's view, a person is harmed
when she is unable to live a minimally decent life in the society to
which she belongs. Needs, therefore, cannot be identified without
reference to the social norms that define the requirements of decency
in a particular place. Since this will depend on cultural factors
peculiar to each society, Miller further distinguishes
between *basic* needs and *societal* needs, where the
former are understood as the conditions required for a decent life
in *any* society, and the latter as the larger set of
requirements for a decent life in the particular society to which a
person belongs. Thus food is a basic need, while literacy is a
societal need in any technologically advanced society. Miller argues
that this societal variability does not impugn the objectivity or
moral force of need claims.




There are some important common elements to these and other recent
accounts of normatively salient needs. The needs that matter morally
are those that are necessary, indispensable, or inescapable, at least
with respect to some important goals such as human functioning in
social groups (Braybrooke 1987, Thomson 1987, Wiggins 1998), our
ability to function as human agents (Copp 1998, Gewirth 1978,
O'Neill 1998, Shue 1980), or promoting human flourishing (Reader
2005) especially when we consider the many ways in which human agents
typically engage with their social environments. While needs theorists
are of the view that normatively salient needs must be importantly
connected to functioning in social settings, they vary on
whether *only* widely shared needs can have this standing or
whether needs that are specific to particular people can have this
standing as well. Reader (2007, chs. 4-5) is notable for her
claim that there is nothing normatively special about needs that are
rooted in common human nature, though she adds that while this holds
true in moral philosophy, in political philosophy and policy it is
understandable that widely recognized and entrenched needs should be
the focus of attention.


## 4. Needs in Recent Theories of Distributive Justice




Given the prominent role that needs appear to play in popular
conceptions of social justice, it may seem remarkable that they have
been largely sidelined in the theories of distributive justice
developed by philosophers over the last half century, as this section
will demonstrate. It is perhaps not a surprise that libertarian
theorists such as Robert Nozick should deny that justice might require
redistribution on behalf of those in need (Nozick 1974, ch. 8; for a
critique see Brock 1995). On such a view, while it might be charitable
or benevolent to help a person in need, justice is defined in terms of
the obligation to respect an individual's personal and property
rights, and so need only becomes relevant when a person's needy
condition is the result of a prior rights-violation (say, because they
have been robbed of their means of subsistence).




Most liberal philosophers, however, rather than explicitly rejecting
claims of need, have chosen instead to subsume them within some
broader theory of justice, thereby denying them any special force.
Consider, for example, utilitarian philosophers who advocate using
overall welfare, understood either as happiness or as desire
satisfaction, as the goal by which proposed policies should be
evaluated. Needs will feature indirectly in this picture: an
unfulfilled need is likely to be a source of pain or frustration, a
fulfilled need a source of satisfaction. But there is no reason of
principle to discriminate between, for example, a need and a strong
desire. As we saw in section 2.2.1, Griffin (1986) uses the example of
scholars preferring to build a library extension in place of a gym to
illustrate the error in supposing that needs should always trump
well-informed wants. From a welfarist perspective, there is nothing
special about meeting claims of need.




John Rawls's theory of justice is often presented as a
corrective to the deficiencies of utilitarianism. But like his
utilitarian rivals, Rawls pays no specific attention to needs. In the
first full presentation of his theory, what Rawls refers to as
'the precept of need' is given one paragraph in a book of
600 pages (Rawls 1971, 276-77). The reason for this neglect
is fairly clear. According to Rawls, social justice concerns the
distribution of 'primary goods'--listed as
'rights and liberties, opportunities and powers, income and
wealth'--and he assesses that distribution by looking at
how representative individuals occupying different social positions,
like unskilled worker, fare. So the need claims of particular
individuals, such as those with disabilities or special health care
requirements, never enter the picture (see further Sen 1980). Rawls
speaks of needs only when discussing the transfer branch of
government, which is supposed to correct the market distribution of
income and wealth by giving resources to those who are worst off
economically. In other words, need-based claims for income are
subsumed under the general principle of controlling inequalities so as
to maximise the living standard of the least advantaged
group--the so-called 'difference principle' (Rawls
1971, SS 12-13). Rawls mentions in passing a different kind
of justice that concerns the allocation of goods to particular
persons, but at this stage he simply excludes it from his theory as a
potentially misleading distraction (Rawls 1971, 88-89).




In his later presentation of the theory (Rawls 2001), Rawls tried to
respond to the charge that he had overlooked one important dimension
of social justice by failing to notice how citizens who had the same
share of primary goods might nonetheless have very different
individual needs (for this criticism, see especially Sen 1980, 1992,
ch. 5). He did so by arguing that access to medical care,
specifically, should be regarded as one component of the basic bundle
of goods whose size the difference principle aimed to maximise (Rawls
2001, SS 51). Each citizen could anticipate that over the course
of her lifetime she could expect to require some medical treatment,
and so access to health care should be factored into the calculation
of her life prospects. Rawls did not, however, have anything more
specific to say about justice in health care--for instance about
who among the needy had the strongest claims to be treated--nor
about needs of other kinds, nor about the position of people with
serious disabilities who could not aspire to be 'fully
co-operating members of society'. Thus arguably the most
influential theory of social justice to have appeared in the last
half-century virtually eliminated need as an independent criterion of
distribution.




Consider next Ronald Dworkin's 'equality of
resources' view (Dworkin 1981). This might appear to give more
scope to needs than Rawls's theory by virtue of the fact that it
regards personal capacities and incapacities as among the resources
that a theory of justice must take into account. Thus insofar as need
can be represented as an internal resource deficiency, we might expect
Dworkin to count it as a feature that may entitle its bearer to
receive additional resources by way of compensation. And he does
indeed devote some attention both to the issue of people with
handicaps and to the issue of health care in Dworkin 2000 (especially
chs 2 and 8). He tackles this problem through the device of
hypothetical insurance: to illustrate this in the case of medical
needs, in order to decide what provision a state should make for
health care--how much it should spend and what priorities it
should adopt when resources are scarce--we should ask what health
care insurance people would buy in advance if they did not know what
their own medical needs would turn out to be. Since this is likely to
vary from one person to the next, depending on how averse they are to
particular risks, Dworkin has to stipulate that what justice requires
the state to provide is the level of coverage that most people would
choose to buy under these conditions. In reaching a decision, people
would be expected to trade off buying different levels of insurance
against other ways of using their money. So again this is a case in
which need considerations get subsumed under a wider principle, in
this case compensating people for disadvantages which they would have
insured against suffering in advance. Need claims aren't allowed
to have independent force. Dworkin's answer to the question
'is satisfying this particular need a matter of justice?'
is 'it depends on whether people generally would have chosen to
purchase insurance against the chance of having it'. The same
principle is applied to other misfortunes, such as the chance of
becoming unemployed.




Finally here, consider so-called luck egalitarian theories of
distributive justice (see, for example, Temkin 1993; Knight 2009;
Cohen 2011, Part 1; Knight and Stemplowska 2011; Tan 2012). These hold
that no-one should be worse off than anyone else unless they are
responsible for being worse-off, for example by developing expensive
tastes or gambling away their resources. Conversely, inequalities that
can be attributed to brute luck--such as a storm that demolishes
my house but not yours--should be compensated for by
redistribution from the lucky to the unlucky. At first sight, it looks
as though this principle will be sensitive to variations in need:
being prone to disease or requiring more calories than average to stay
healthy look like exactly the kind of involuntary misfortunes that
luck egalitarians will seek to rectify via resource transfers. But
notice that special needs of this sort are treated no differently from
other sources of disadvantage, like having meagre talents or being
born into a poor family. Luck egalitarians use an undiscriminating,
and often ill-defined, currency of advantage/disadvantage that can
respond to the fact that some people are needier than others, but
without giving those differences any special weight. Notice also that
a luck egalitarian will distinguish between needs that a person has as
a result of her innate bodily features or of accidents that befall
her, and needs that she has as a result of lifestyle or other choices
for which she is personally responsible, and will mandate that she be
compensated only for having special needs in the first category. This
has led critics such as Anderson (1999) to accuse the doctrine of
harshness for abandoning negligent victims and discriminating among
the disabled according to the source of their disability. For luck
egalitarians, justice doesn't require that we should respond to
people's needs regardless of how they have arisen.


## 5. Distribution According to Need




For those who believe that claims of need can also be claims of
justice, the idea that what justice requires is that resources should
be distributed *according* to need has an obvious appeal: the
needier someone is, the more resources they should be assigned. Marx
famously wrote that in the higher state of communist society, resource
distribution would be governed by the principle 'from each
according to his ability, to each according to his needs' (Marx
1977, 569). But he prefaced this by pointing out that this could
only happen once 'the productive forces have also increased with
the all-round development of the individual, and all the springs of
co-operative wealth flow more abundantly'--that is to say,
scarcity had been overcome. Because of this assumption, it is arguable
whether the principle as proposed by Marx should be seen as a
principle of justice, or as a principle for a world that has moved
beyond the circumstances for justice (see Buchanan 1982; Lukes 1985,
ch.4; Wood 1980).


### 5.1 Proportionality Principle




Under conditions of abundance, it is perfectly clear what distribution
according to need entails: everyone should receive the resources that
are required to fulfil all of their needs. The much more difficult
question is to provide an interpretation of the principle under
conditions of scarcity where needs cannot be met in full (for longer
discussions, see Miller 1999, ch. 10 and Miller, forthcoming). We can
think of each person as having a need-based claim which is measured by
the size of the gap between what she now has, and what she would have
to be given to meet her need in full. For example, if for a healthy
life a woman needs food that provides 2000 kilocalories per day, but
the amount of food now available to her only provides 1500, then her
claim is for additional food that provides 500 kilocalories. It might
then seem that to distribute according to need means to distribute in
proportion to the size of claims: the person whose claim is 1000 kcal
should receive twice as much food as the person whose claim is
500. This models distribution according to need on distribution
according to (comparative) desert, where a proportionality principle
is generally thought to be the appropriate one to use. But in the case
of needs, there are two objections to this solution.




First, there is no general reason to think that people will be equally
effective in converting need-satisfying resources into satisfied
needs. This will depend, for example, on the body's capacity to
metabolize food or medicine. So a distribution of resources that is
proportionate to initial need claims won't necessarily bring
about a proportionate decrease in those claims. Second, even if
conversion rates are the same, applying the proportionality principle
will still leave those with larger initial claims worse off. For
example, suppose we only have enough food to supply 600 kcal of energy
to the two people in the previous paragraph. Using the proportionality
principle, we award 400 kcal to the first person and 200 kcal to the
second. But the outcome is that the first person is left with an
unsatisfied claim for 600 kcal and the second for only 300
kcal. Intuitively, this is not what it means to attend to their needs
fairly.


### 5.2 Equalising Outcomes




This suggests an alternative principle: distribute in whatever way
leaves people at the end of the distribution with unsatisfied claims
that are as nearly equal in size as possible. In the example given,
that would mean aiming for an outcome in which each person falls 450
kcal short of a fully adequate diet. But this too faces
objections. One is that it may look implausible in cases where some
people are very poor at converting resources into
need-satisfaction. Suppose, for example, we have to allocate medical
resources between a number of people some of whom are very ill but
whose condition can be improved only slightly by the resources we
have. The equal outcome principle may entail devoting all of the
available resources to those people, and this may seem unfair to those
who otherwise could be helped much more. The principle in its
unqualified form might also recommend levelling down--i.e.,
withholding resources from people where supplying them would have the
effect of increasing final inequality in need-satisfaction.


### 5.3 Minimising Neediness




In complete contrast, distribution according to need could be
interpreted to mean minimising unmet need, in other words satisfying
need claims to the greatest possible extent overall. This, however,
seems more like a principle of efficiency than a principle of
justice. As such, it is vulnerable to the objection that it
doesn't take seriously the separateness of persons. It is likely
to require consistently favouring those who are best at converting
resources into need-satisfaction, and conversely it may recommend
doing nothing for people who have large need claims but whose
situation is such that it can only materially be improved by deploying
a lot of resources. Once again this seems intuitively unfair.


### 5.4 Weighted Priority Principle




It follows that to assess what someone is due under a needs-based
principle of distribution, we will have to take into account at least
the following three factors: how large their claim is in absolute
terms; how large their claim is compared with the claims of others in
the relevant group; and how capable they are of converting resources
into diminished levels of need. This raises the question whether there
is any single principle of distribution that is sensitive to each of
these factors. One principle that might appear to be is the weighted
priority principle defended, for example, in Crisp 2002. Whereas a
strict priority principle tells us always to begin by attending to
those with the largest need claims--and therefore fall foul of
the problem noted above, of paying no attention to relative capacity
to benefit, so that it may instruct us to focus exclusively on
bringing about small improvements in the condition of the most
needy--a weighted priority principle works differently. It
calculates gains by multiplying reductions in needs score by a factor
that reflects the absolute starting position of the person in
question. So if we return to the simple case where one person needs
1000 kcals and another 500 kcals, and use an arithmetic weighting
factor, then we would count reducing the first person's level of
need to 800 kcals as equivalent to reducing the second person's
level of need to 400. The needier person's gain is treated as
twice as significant as the less needy person's.




But this principle too has implications that in some cases seem
counterintuitive. One is that, despite the tilt in favour of the
neediest, there are going to be cases in which it advocates helping a
large number of less needy people instead. If enough people can have
minor headaches relieved at the cost of denying someone a kidney
transplant, the principle will advocate doing that. Crisp responds to
this problem by introducing a needs threshold such that those with
relatively trivial needs are excluded at the first stage of
implementation and only come into consideration if there are surplus
resources after the weighted priority principle is applied to those
above the threshold. But, as he himself puts it, 'where the
threshold falls, of course, is the key question any proponent of this
view must answer' (Crisp 2002, 140).




Another problem with the weighted priority view is that it pays no
direct attention to horizontal fairness between people, in the
following sense: we think that if two people begin in the same
condition of need--say they have sustained similar
injuries--there is value in their receiving treatment that gives
them the same outcome, so long as this is feasible and not excessively
costly. But the weighted priority principle cannot ensure this, since
it has a bias in favour of the victim who can be treated at lesser
cost; by choosing to treat that person rather than the equally needy
other, more needs overall can be satisfied. So although there might be
exceptional cases in which we are willing to practice a form of
triage, because we can see that treating John's needs will have
opportunity costs that are simply too high, the weighted priority
principle risks taking us too far in that direction.


### 5.5 Effectiveness Principle




A variant on the weighted priority view has been proposed by Hassoun
in the form of her 'effectiveness principle', defined as
follows:



> 
> 
> 
> First, rank the possible policies from best to worst according to how
> much weighted need they alleviate. Second, rank the possible policies
> from best to worst according to the number of people they help. Third,
> for each policy, combine its ranking in terms of how much weighted
> need it alleviates with its ranking for how many people it helps to
> yield its final score (Hassoun 2009, 259-60).
> 
> 




The new element introduced by Hassoun here is the idea that needs
policies are better to the extent that they help more people rather
than fewer even if the overall improvement in (weighted)
need-satisfaction remains the same. Of course this would be liable to
make matters worse in the kind of case that worries Crisp. Where the
weighted priority principle can be faulted for allowing many
relatively minor need claims to outweigh the more serious claims of a
few badly-off people, adding in a component that gives credit simply
for the number of people who are aided only adds to the
problem. Nonetheless, it is worth asking whether the justice of an
allocation should be sensitive to the sheer number of people whose
needs are met.




One reason for thinking so might be that it always shows respect for a
person to attend practically to their needs, even if only in a small
way. So the more people who are treated when an allocation is
performed, the more recognition is extended to those in need. The
challenge, however, is to understand why sufficient respect is not
being shown when everyone's claims are properly
*considered* by whoever is performing an allocation, even if the
end result is that some people get nothing because whatever claim they
might have is justifiably outweighed by the stronger claims of other
people. So one might question whether the numbers being aided has
the deeper significance that Hassoun's effectiveness principle
implies, as opposed merely to providing evidence that no-one's
claim has been overlooked.




The upshot of this discussion is that in conditions of scarcity, there
is no uniquely defensible way of spelling out the principle of
distribution according to need. We face conflicting imperatives: to
meet as many needs as possible, taking into account how much each
costs to satisfy, and to preserve comparative justice by ensuring that
people whose needs are similar are treated in the same way. This can
be presented as a trade-off between efficiency and justice, but since
as noted earlier we are often required to meet needs as a matter of
justice, it can also be seen as a clash between non-comparative and
comparative justice.


## 6. Needs and Capabilities




Needs have long played a role as guides to public policy, not only
domestically but also internationally, where the so-called Basic Needs
Approach to global poverty and international development became
dominant in the 1970s and early 1980s. More recently, however, it has
been displaced by the 'capabilities approach' developed
especially by Amartya Sen and implemented in policy instruments such
as the UN's Human Development Index. Sen (1984) argued that the
basic needs approach was too narrow for these purposes, as well as
being defective for a number of other reasons, and should therefore be
subsumed within his capabilities approach. In this section we review
the arguments for and against replacing needs with capabilities as a
tool of policy evaluation (see also Reader 2006). For a much fuller
discussion of capabilities themselves,
 see the entry on
 the capability approach.
 




The capability approach provides a way of measuring a person's
level of well-being. It combines two elements:
'functionings', that is the various activities that a
person performs or states that they achieve, and
'capabilities', that is the option of realizing
functionings if one so chooses. Thus 'being adequately
nourished' and 'working as a computer programmer'
are examples of functionings, whereas 'having the choice to be
adequately nourished' and 'having the option to work as a
computer programmer' are examples of capabilities. The approach
places most emphasis on capabilities out of a concern for freedom of
choice. A concern for functionings alone, it is argued, might justify
forcing people to behave in certain ways (eat healthy food, for
example). A person's well-being is then measured by the size of
her capability set: the more capabilities she has, the better off she
is judged to be.




As will immediately be clear, capabilities capture many more aspects
of human well-being than do needs, and this is claimed to be an
advantage of the approach. But it comes with a corresponding
disadvantage, namely that capabilities lack the normative force that
needs possess. Some capabilities (like the option of being adequately
nourished) are morally important, while others (like the option to buy
a fancy sports car) are trivial. So whereas a person's being in
need always counts as a strong *pro tanto* reason to aid them,
a person's lacking a capability may be of no moral concern at
all.




In response to this problem, Sen has introduced the idea of
'basic capabilities', understood as 'the ability to
satisfy certain elementary and crucially important functionings up to
certain levels' (Sen 1992, 45), for use in definitions of global
poverty. In this case the basic needs approach and the capabilities
approach will converge, since identifying these 'crucially
important functionings' will involve the same exercise as
identifying universal human needs, namely establishing what is
necessary for human beings to enjoy a minimally decent life. It is a
mistake, therefore, to imagine that by switching from needs to
capabilities one can avoid the difficult semi-empirical task of
establishing what conditions are essential to human beings if they are
to avoid being harmed.




Capability theorists, including Sen, have levelled a number of
criticisms against the basic needs approach. One is that the approach
is excessively commodity-focused. However, this criticism does not
seem to be appropriate if we look at either the original or subsequent
defenders of needs as a policy tool for international development
(though perhaps the complaint has more traction if targeted at the
implementation priorities of the time). The original defenders often
included non-material needs, such as employment (Streeten 1981;
Stewart 1985). More generally, there is no reason to assume that only
commodities are relevant need satisfiers, and this is obvious when we
look at how needs theorists develop their accounts (see further Reader
2006). Consider Braybrooke (1987) as one prominent example: his list
includes such important items as the need for a life-supporting
relation to the environment, for social acceptance and recognition,
for freedom from harassment, and for companionship. Indeed, reflecting
on the whole list, we notice that while commodities might be relevant
to satisfying some of these needs, they are not relevant to (or only a
very small part of) fulfilling most of the items on his list.




A second charge levelled by Sen is that 'a concentration on just
the minimum requirements may lead to a softening of the opposition to
inequality in general' (Sen 1984, 515). This draws attention to
the fact that needs define a standard of sufficiency (see Frankfurt
2015) and cannot be appealed to directly to determine how any
available surplus resources above that line should be allocated.
However the point should not be overstated. In today's world,
reducing inequality by redistribution from rich to poor may be a
necessary precondition for meeting everyone's basic needs.
Moreover if we widen the focus to consider needs that arise in
particular societies, we will often find that needs and inequality
interact, since what is essential for a minimally decent life will
depend in part on the general standard of living in the society in
question. It is for this reason that poverty is often defined in
relative terms, as having an income below a certain percentage of the
social median.




Finally, the most prominent claim made on behalf of the capability
approach is that, unlike a needs-based approach, it puts front and
center the values of choice and participation (Alkire 2002 and
2005). There are several responses available to this objection. First,
the charge assumes that the recipients of needs-meeting policy will
not have their choices respected and, more generally, will not
participate in activities aimed at meeting their needs. However we
might think that providing options for enabling people to meet their
needs, while leaving final choices to them as to whether they avail
themselves of those options, is all that plausible needs-directed
policy requires. There is plenty of scope for respecting choices 
consistently with providing such options. Second, capability
theorists can be accused of a kind of "freedom fetishism"
by overstating the importance of freedom of choice in many cases. Here
we might draw attention to the important problem of adaptive
preferences which might lead people to fail to seize opportunities
that would otherwise allow them to meet their needs. In these
circumstances, less weight should be attached to people's
choices or their expressed views about these choices. Indeed
capability theorists themselves recognize the force of this point
insofar as they include achieved functionings alongside capabilities
in their overall metric of personal well-being. In some cases it is
the functioning itself, rather than the capability, that matters: if
our task is to supply drinkable water to a village that up to now has
lacked it, there is no reason to leave the old polluted well open so
that the villagers have the capacity to choose between clean and
unclean water. Providing clean water is all that should concern
us.


## 7. How Concern with Needs is Covered in Some Other Prominent Debates




For much of this entry we have been considering needs in a societal
context and have focused on needs-related responsibilities to
currently existing members of our society. But questions about
responsibilities in connection with needs are certainly not confined
to this context. Are nonhuman animals' needs normatively
salient, and if so, how should they be weighed against human needs?
Should the needs of future generations bear on current decisions
concerning distributing according to need? How should the grave and
urgent needs of those in low-income countries condition
responsibilities to meet less dire needs of compatriots? These kinds
of questions raise a huge range of further issues that we cannot
discuss here. Fortunately, there are several entries in this
Encyclopedia that discuss such questions and several of these are
listed in the section on Related Entries below. For more on the first
question
 see 
 moral status of animals.
 For more on the second issue see
 intergenerational justice.
 For more on the third topic see
 global justice
 and
 international distributive justice.