Philosophers often identify needing something with requiring it to avoid harm. This view of need is roughly accurate, but no adequate analysis of the relevant sort of requirement has been given, and the relevant notion of harm has not been clarified. Further, the harm-avoidance picture must be broadened, because we also need what is required to reduce danger. I offer two analyses of need (one probabilistic) to address these shortcomings. The analyses are at a high level of generality and accommodate (...) our ordinary notion of need as well as narrower conceptions. I also explain why the only extant, detailed modal account of need, David Wiggins’s (1987/1998), is inadequate. My analyses imply that to have a need for something is to have the (expected) quality of one’s life depend counterfactually on it in a certain way. The analyses shed some light on need’s distinctive normative significance. (shrink)

This book offers an original account of a distinctly republican theory of social and global justice. The book starts by exploring the nature and value of Hegelian recognition theory. It shows the importance of that theory for grounding a normative account of free and autonomous agency. It is this normative account of free agency which provides the groundwork for a republican conception of social and global justice, based on the core-ideas of freedom as non-domination and autonomy as non-alienation. As the (...) author argues, republicans should endorse a sufficientarian account of social justice, which focuses on the nature of social relationships and their effects on people's ability to act freely and realize their fundamental interests. On the global level, the book argues for the cosmopolitan extension of the republican principles of non-domination and non-alienation within a multi-level democratic system. In so doing, the book addresses a major gap in the existing literature, presenting an original theory of justice, which combines Hegelian recognition theory and republican ideas of freedom, and applying this hybrid theory to the global domain. Fabian Schuppert creates a grand synthesis uniting neo-republican insights on freedom with Hegelian recognition theory. The result is an account of agency that arises from the idea of non-domination whose aim it is to safeguard individual freedom. When combined with Hegelian recognition theory a social focus also emerges. This amalgam comments on many of the major disputes concerning global justice from a cosmopolitan perspective. Because of the broad scope and the many contemporary discussions engaged this book will be of keen interest to scholars as well as a welcome addition to the classroom. (shrink)

Bedürfnisse sind etwas, das uns als Menschen grundlegend bestimmt. Der vorliegende Band fasst eine Reihe von Vignettenstudien zusammen, in denen untersucht wird, welche Rolle Bedürfnisse im Umgang mit Problemen der Verteilungsgerechtigkeit spielen. Während sie in Diskussionen zur Verteilungsgerechtigkeit häufig eher unterrepräsentiert sind, wird hier gezeigt, dass sie eine fundamentale Bedeutung im Denken der Menschen haben. Es wird unter anderem deutlich, dass unparteiischen Beobachter*innen graduelle Gerechtigkeitseinschätzungen von Verteilungssituationen vornehmen, die davon abhängig sind, wie umfangreich die beobachteten Parteien mit einem Gut ausgestattet (...) sind. Wenn außerdem bekannt ist, wie hoch deren Bedarf an jenem Gut ist, finden die Einschätzungen relativ zu diesem Referenzpunkt statt. Außerdem werden in der Rolle von unparteiischen Entscheider*innen hypothetische Verteilungsentscheidungen getroffen, die den Bedarf, die Leistung sowie die Verantwortung der betroffenen Parteien berücksichtigen. Hierbei wird der Bedarf einer Partei auch dann zumindest teilweise kompensiert, wenn diese weniger zu der zur Verfügung stehenden Gütermenge beigetragen hat, als sie selbst benötigt. Die Bereitschaft, den Bedarf einer Partei teilweise zu kompensieren, sinkt jedoch, wenn sie dafür verantwortlich ist, mehr als andere zu benötigen oder weniger als andere beigetragen zu haben. Und sowohl in der Rolle von unparteiischen Beobachter*innen als auch in der Rolle von unparteiischen Entscheider*innen wird zwischen unterschiedlichen Bedarfsarten unterschieden, deren Erfüllung verschiedene Wichtigkeit beigemessen wird. (shrink)

The role that need plays in dealing with problems of distributive justice is examined in a series of vignette studies. Among other things, it becomes clear that impartial observers make gradual assessments of justice that depend on the extent to which the observed individuals are endowed with a good. If it is known how high their need for that good is, the assessments are made relative to this reference point. In addition, impartial decision-makers make hypothetical distribution decisions that take into (...) account need, productivity, and accountability. The need of individuals is partially compensated even if they have contributed less to the available amount than they themselves require. However, the willingness to do so decreases if they are accountable for needing more than others or for having contributed less than others. Lastly, both impartial observers and impartial decision-makers distinguish between different types of needs, the fulfillment of which is given different levels of importance. (shrink)

Care ethics takes as central the discerning of needs in those being cared for and attempts to meet those needs. Perceptive caring agents are more likely to be able to identify needs in those for whom they are caring. The identification of needs is no small matter, not least in teaching encounters. This paper modestly proposes that at least some of the needs a caring agent should attempt to meet are a function of the identity of the patient of caring (...) action. Taking Nel Noddings’ account of care ethics as representative, I present it in outline. This leads to the needs-identification problematic. Following this I turn to Soran Reader’s account of needs. I interpret this to offer what I designate as identity as ‘what-ness’. Such an understanding of identity-based needs is a starting point for the caring agent but a more nuanced account, of identity as ‘who-ness’, is argued to be preferable. Identity as ‘who-ness’, as expressed in Paul Ricoeur’s work, advances the discussion, culminating in his concept of the ‘capable human being’. Having brought this aspect of Ricoeur’s thought into conversation with care ethics, I offer an account of identity-based needs conducive to the broader aims of the care ethical project. Finally, I consider what this bolstered account of care ethics might say about a brief and illustrative teaching encounter. (shrink)

People who are involuntarily childless need to use assisted reproductive technologies if they want to have a genetically related child. Yet, from an ethical point of view it is unclear to what extent assistance to satisfy this specific desire should be warranted. We first show that the subjectively felt harm due to the inability to satisfy this reproductive desire does not in itself entail the normative conclusion that it has to be met. In response, we evaluate the alternative view according (...) to which the satisfaction of this desire is regarded as a way to meet one’s presumed intermediate need for parenthood. This view presupposes that parenthood is one of those general categories of experiences and activities that contribute an irreplaceable value to people’s lives, but the central difficulty is to find those characteristics that mark out parenthood as an irreplaceable constituent of a valuable life. We go on to argue, however, that even if one assumes that parenthood is such an irreplaceable constituent that makes life more valuable, this does not necessarily entail a moral duty to satisfy the desire for genetic parenthood. We conclude that there is a pro tanto obligation to help people conceive a genetically related child (if this is what they prefer), but that this can be outweighed by other moral considerations, such as safety and justice concerns. (shrink)

People have various desires, but it is a contested moral issue when a desire becomes of such importance that it legitimizes a moral claim on others. This paper explores how the normative significance of desire satisfaction can be assessed and argues that a normatively significant desire can constitute a pro tanto obligation to help satisfy it. The paper presents a framework that relates the normative significance of a given desire to the general goal of living a reasonably valuable life and (...) inquires how the latter can be given determinate content without excluding a heterogeneity of the personal good. The paper contends that the set of possibly normatively significant desires is thus restricted by considerations about intelligibility, adequacy, and replaceability, which are mediated by societal background theories. (shrink)

This thesis is the first step in a research project which aims to develop an accurate and robust theory of global justice. The thesis concerns the content of our duties of global justice, under strict compliance theory. It begins by discussing the basic framework of my theory of global justice, which consists in two aspects: duties of minimal wellbeing, which are universal, and duties of fairness and equality, which are associative and not universal. With that in place, it briefly discusses (...) the nature of duties of fairness and equality. I shall argue that they are associative, because they are derived from the form of cooperation at hand; and that there are three kinds of them in our contemporary world: states, local cooperation and trans-state cooperation. It is from their forms of cooperation that these duties are derived. After that, the thesis focuses exclusively on duties of minimal wellbeing. Against the usual account of these duties - the human-flourishing account - I argue for my human-life account. This account argues that the function of these duties is to secure a human life for individuals; and it begins with a Razian conception of wellbeing, which states that the wellbeing of an individual is fundamentally constituted by: (a) the satisfaction of his biological needs, and (b) his success in whole-heartedly pursuing socially defined and determined goals and activities which are in fact valuable. An account of what constitutes a human life is then derived from this conception of wellbeing – it is a life that consists in having a level of wellbeing that is higher than the satisfaction of biological needs, where this is constituted by the pursuit of goals and activities with a sense of what is worth doing; and this in turn consists in: (a) being able to forms ideas of what is worth doing, (b) being able to revise them in light of further reasons, and (c) being able to coordinate one's actions according to them. I then determine the specific objects of duties of minimal wellbeing (means for the satisfaction of biological needs, education, physical security, freedom of belief, association and expression, freedom of non-harmful conduct, and minimal resources), by determining what is involved in securing such a human life for individuals. (shrink)