Basic human needs: abstraction, indeterminacy and the political account of need

ABSTRACT

The basic human needs approach contends that the needs which matter – the basic needs – are human needs. This article conducts a critical examination of that approach, and finds it wanting. My claim is that the abstract, indeterminate nature of human needs makes it impossible to establish their normative priority (or ‘basicness’). I begin by showing why human needs are necessarily abstract. This follows from the standard response given by basic human needs theorists to the problem of cultural diversity: to avoid favouring one way of life over others, and to plausibly apply universally, human needs must be specified at a high level of generality. The problem, however, is that this abstract specification undermines the capacity of basic human needs to offer guidance in concrete contexts. The approach thus requires some account of the properties which shape the concrete specification of basic human needs. However, the special status thus afforded to those properties (what I call ‘specifiers’) undermines the arguments deployed to establish the basicness of human needs. Having rejected the basic human needs approach, I finish by sketching an alternative: namely, the political account of needs.

KEYWORDS:

• Needs
• human needs
• harm
• abstraction
• politics of need

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Terrell Carver and Jonathan Floyd for their support, and for feedback on numerous earlier drafts. An earlier version of this article was presented at the LSE Political Theory Graduate Conference 2019, and I am grateful to everyone who provided helpful comments on that occasion. I am also grateful to the anonymous reviewers for the insightful feedback they have offered.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council [ES/P000630/1].

Notes on contributors

George Boss

George Boss is a doctoral candidate at the University of Bristol, UK. His research interests include the political philosophy of need, the capabilities approach, political agonism and realism, and Marxian approaches in political thought. His current research explores these themes in the work of Marx, with the aim of developing a Marxian political account of need.