Necessary Goods Our Responsibilities to Meet Others Needs

by Brock, Gillian

• ISBN13: 9780847688180
• ISBN10: 0847688186
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1998-05-19
• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Summary

Do any needs defensibly make claims on anyone? If so, which needs and whose needs can defensibly do this? What are the grounds for our responsibilities to meet others' needs, when we have such responsibilities? The distinguished contributors to this volume consider these questions as they evaluate the moral force of needs. They approach questions of obligation and moral importance from a variety of different theoretical perspectives, including contractarian, Kantian, Aristotelian, rights-based, egalitarian, liberal, and libertarian perspectives.

Table of Contents

Preface	vii	(2)
Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction	1	(18)
Gillian Brock
1 Necessity and Desire	19	(14)
Harry G. Frankfurt
2 What Is the Force of the Claim That One Needs Something?	33	(24)
David Wiggins
3 The Concept of Needs, with a Heartwarming Offer of Aid to Utilitarianism	57	(16)
David Braybrooke
4 Vulnerabilities and Responsibilities: An Ethical Defense of the Welfare State	73	(22)
Robert E. Goodin
5 Rights, Obligations, and Needs	95	(18)
Onora O'Neill
6 Equality, Justice, and the Basic Needs	113	(22)
David Copp
7 Aristotelian Social Democracy	135	(22)
Martha Nussbaum
8 A Theory of Human Need	157	(16)
Len Doyal
9 Is Redistribution to Help the Needy Unjust?	173	(12)
Gillian Brock
10 From Liberty to Universal Welfare	185	(34)
James P. Sterba
11 Responsibility for Needs	219	(14)
John Baker
Charles Jones
Index	233	(4)
About the Contributors	237