Meeting Needs

David Braybrooke

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780691609584, 9780691637846
• eBook ISBN: 9781400858521
• Topic: Filosofia
• Subtopic: Filosofia politica

The concept of needs works to sort out social policies. Yet the idea is in disrepute with many thinkers who, led by economists, accuse it of being too fluid, or too narrow, or of serving no purpose that the concept of preferences does not serve better. David Braybrooke refutes these charges by providing a model of how the concept of needs works when it is working well.

Originally published in 1987.

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Advice to Readers
• 1. The Charges Against the Concept of Needs
• 2. The Concept of Needs in Normative Use Applied to Social Policy: Basic Account
• 3. Complications Surrounding the Basic Account: Derivation, Conventionality, Normativity
• 4. The Place of Needs in Reasoning About Justice
• 5. Utilitarianism Without Utility
• 6. Attention to Needs with Further Attention to Preferences
• 7. The Expansion of Needs
• 8. The Concept of Needs at Three Points of Breakdown
• Notes
• Acknowledgments
• Index