HUMAN NEEDS, HUMAN WANTS, AND POLITICAL CONSEQUENCES

Abstract. If human need is to serve as a political norm, it must first have the status of ascertainable fact. Its proponents hold that it has that status: that genuine needs can be ascertained, by reference to the circumstances in which human beings normally flourish. Some of the recent writing on human needs and politics has been marked by excessive confidence, and has been justly criticized as naive and tendentious. But the critics have not shown, and seem to have thought it unnecessary to show, that a reasoned choice among models of human excellence is impossible. Consequently, the consideration of human needs in politics cannot be regarded as a dead end, notwithstanding the poor showing of its best-known recent protagonists.