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INDEX
INDEX.................................................................................................................1 DIFFICULT TO DETERMINE/DEFINE NEEDS..............................................................2 SOCIETAL CONSENSUS LINK....................................................................................3 DEFINING NEEDS NEGATES MORAL OBLIGATION......................................................4

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DIFFICULT TO DETERMINE/DEFINE NEEDS

Needs vary among individuals- theres no non-arbitrary way to determine their respective values. Ignatieff Michael Ignatieff, Professor Human Rights Policy-Kennedy School of Government, Harvard, 1984, The Needs of Strangers:
An essay on privacy, solidarity and the politics of being human, p. 15

individuals have different needs. Some people need religious consolation, while others do not; some need citizenship, while others seem content with a purely private existence; some pursue riches, while others pursue knowledge, power, sex, even danger. Who is to say which is the truer path to human fulfillment? If human nature is historical, individuals have different histories and therefore different needs.
It seems a fact of life that

(__) It is difficult to determine an objective conception of need. Ignatieff

Ignatieff, Professor Human Rights Policy-Kennedy School of Government, Harvard, 1984, The Needs of Strangers: An essay on privacy, solidarity and the politics of being human, p. 15
is all a human being needs.

Michael

Modern welfare may not be generous by any standard other than a comparison with the nineteenth century workhouse, but it does attempt to satisfy a wide range of basic needs for food, shelter, clothing, warmth and medical care. The question is whether that

the word to

When we talk about needs we mean something more than just basic necessities of human survival. We also use describe what a person needs in order to live to their full potential. What we need in order to survival, and what we need in order to flourish are two different

things. The aged poor on my street get just enough to survive. The question is whether they get what they need in order to live a human life. The political arguments between right and left over the future of the welfare state which rage over these old peoples heads almost always take their needs entirely for granted. Both sides assume that what they need is income, food, clothing, shelter and medical care, then debate whether they are entitled to these goods as a matter of right, and whether there are adequate

[And,] human needs in terms of basic necessities. These are, after all, relative and historical, and there has always been fierce controversy over the level at which basic entitlements should be set in any society. How much more controversial must be [is] the definition of need as the conditions for human flourishing. There is not just one good human life, but many. Who is to say what humans need to accomplish all the finest purposes they can set for themselves?
resources to provide them if they are. What almost never gets asked is whether they might need something more than the means of mere survival. There are good reasons for this silence. It is difficult enough to define

(__) And, reject conceptions of need based on freedom or happiness. Ignatieff Michael Ignatieff, Professor Human Rights Policy-Kennedy School of Government, Harvard, 1984, The Needs of Strangers: An essay on privacy, solidarity and the politics of being human, p.
15
It is common knowledge in the language of rights to define essential requirements basic goods, as John Rawls calls them as necessary preconditions for personal freedom. The advantage of this way of thinking is that it seeks to reconcile a theory of the good

essential requirements of a decent life love, respect, solidarity with others cannot be sensibly justified as necessary for personal freedom. I dont need to be loved in order to be free; I need to be loved to be at peace with myself and to be able to love in turn. A theory of the human good cannot, I think, be premised on the absolute priority of liberty. Nor can it be based on the priority of happiness as the ultimate human end. If we need love, it is for reasons which go beyond the happiness it brings; it is for the connection, the rootedness, it gives us with others. Many of the things we need most deeply in lifelove chief among themdo not necessarily bring us happiness.
with the freedom of each individual to live his life as he chooses. The disadvantage [of this] is that many
If we need them, it is to go to the depth of our being, to learn as much of ourselves as we can stand, to be reconciled to what we find in ourselves and in those around us. In the end, a theory of human needs has to be premised on some set of choices about what humans need in order to be human: not what they need to be happy or free, since these are subsidiary goals, but what they need in order to realize the full extent of their potential. There cannot be any eternally valid account of what it means to be human. All we have to go on is the historical record of what men have valued most in human life.

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SOCIETAL CONSENSUS LINK

Asserting social consensus on what constitutes need undermines individual freedom. Ignatieff Michael Ignatieff, Professor Human Rights Policy-Kennedy School of Government, Harvard, 1984, The Needs of Strangers: An essay on privacy, solidarity and the
politics of being human, p. 15

If this is all we can say about human needs, then it seems to follow that the proper domain of politics ought to be the satisfaction of peoples expressed desires, rather than the enactment of some vision of what their needs might be. A free society can stand for justicefor the idea that private preferences should not result in harm to others but if it stands for more than justice, it will jeopardize the freedom of individuals to choose their needs as they see fit. This is the core of the liberal creed in politics. It draws a line between the needs which can be made a matter of public entitlement and those which
must be left to the private self to satisfy. Since the disestablishment of the churches and the granting of rights of toleration, some of our most durable historical needs for consolation and ultimate explanation -- have passed into the domain of private choice. Likewise, a market society leaves it up to each of us to find work capable of satisfying our needs for purpose and meaning. By and large,

own

beliefs and our own vocation of the solidarity of

the Islamic or Stalinist

few of us would exchange theocracies of the modern age.

the

freedom to choose

our

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DEFINING NEEDS NEGATES MORAL OBLIGATION

(__) Reject the Aff- you cant have a moral obligation without a consistent definition of need. Ignatieff Michael Ignatieff, Professor Human Rights Policy-Kennedy School of Government, Harvard, 1984, The Needs of Strangers: An
essay on privacy, solidarity and the politics of being human, p. 15

representation of the needs of strangers would not merely be perilous, it would be impossible, if human needs were infinitely contestable. In fact politics as such would be impossible unless individual preferences could recognize themselves and unite under a common banner of need. Consistent moral behavior itself would be impossible unless there were some minimum degree of agreement, within a given society, as to the necessary preconditions of human flourishing.
The second question I asked myself was whether it was possible to define what human beings need in order to flourish. The

(__) Morality requires agreement on human needs. Ignatieff

Policy-Kennedy School of Government, Harvard, 1984, The Needs of Strangers: An essay on privacy, solidarity and the politics of being human, p. 15
The duties of this second sort are those of justiceregard to the property of others, observance of promises and contracts, and so on. All human

Michael Ignatieff, Professor Human Rights

morality, therefore, derives from our natural needs or our social ones, our beliefs about the necessities of human society. Awareness of our common necessities makes us capable of grasping the intelligibility of each others conduct and thus of trusting each other. Consciousness of necessity guides human conduct in a universe whose ultimate purpose is wrapped in darkness. Since people share the same needs, they can agree on the minimum preconditions of moral behavior, in particular their obligation to relieve the needs of others in distress.
for human conduct as one grounded in the idea that we owe an account of the stewardship of our lives to our Master. Hume maintained that while individuals might disagree interminably about the proper objects of human desire, they could make minimal binding agreements about what they all needed, in institutions of justice and property, and in rules of moral conduct.

The common belief in the utility of these arrangements is then undergirded by the natural human attributes of pity and sympathy reinforced by habit and custom. A secular ethics, grounded solely in the facts of human need and human belief, is as solid a basis

On this

human

capacity to agree on

the identity of

human need, virtue, order and progress depend.

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