The Inevitability of Human Needs

Abstract

The coherence of the concept of social progress depends upon the belief that some modes of social organisation are better suited to satisfying human need than others. Unless increases in need-satisfaction can be shown to follow from policies which purport to promote such progress their moral purpose will be blurred. This can be seen as regards the varied attempts to defend and improve the welfare state. In light of national differences between welfare provision and differing levels of benefits within nations, some criterion is required to distinguish good and bad welfare systems, to enable the one to be defended and the other to be reformed. Again, it seems that only a coherent concept of objective need can do this work. This is why the threat posed by relativism to such a concept must be addressed and resolved in this volume. Here we begin this task by revealing internal inconsistencies and tensions within the different types of relativism outlined in the preceding chapter. As they stand, all of these positions end up implicitly presupposing what they purport to reject — some notion of universal human need.