Gillian Brock

What sort of moral importance do people's needs have? Can people's needs defensibly make claims on anyone ? Recent arguments concerning the moral importance of needs adopt a distinctive approach: the importance of needs is evaluated in terms of how needs fare in contests with preferences or desires in distributive contexts. I suggest some explanations for this move, but argue that the moral importance of needs is not best evaluated using this strategy. Rather, whether needs can trump, or in other ways significantly affect property rights, is a more adequate test of their importance--indeed, is the crucial issue if needs are to have the kind of moral importance recent arguers want to claim for needs in the kinds of distributive contexts identified. ;So, can people's needs defensibly affect others' property rights? I argue that this question, once thoroughly examined, conceals some important misconceptions about property rights and the kinds of arguments by which they can be justified. I argue that claims of need can have a significant impact on property rights: people's needs can define the limits of defensible property rights in certain sorts of cases. Indeed, failure to recognize the constraints imposed by people's needs leaves one with an indefensible account of property rights. So, if according property rights and rewarding labor are to be defensible practices, there are some needs which legitimately make claims on others

In 'Meeting Needs', Braybrooke argues that a new and improved version of utilitarianism can be constructed around making a priority of satisfying needs. In this paper I concentrate on Braybrooke's suggestion about the method for determining needs, and more generally, the method of settling issues concerning matters of need. (This emphasis is chosen since these problems are most devastating to his project as currently formulated.) I argue that Braybrooke's method is seriously flawed. Braybrooke believes that the process for settling issues concerning needs guarantees consensus and fairness. I refute this claim by showing that a number of assumptions crucial to Braybrooke's method are unwarranted. In addition, I show that these and other structural defects in the method are such that Braybrooke's account is guilty of paternalism and "fraud", despite his attempts to avoid these charges. I also indicate why similar methods are unlikely to meet with success.

Disturbing international inequalities in health abound. Life expectancy in Swaziland is half that in Japan. A child unfortunate enough to be born in Angola has 73 times as great a chance of dying before age 5 as a child born in Norway. A mother giving birth in southern sub-Saharan Africa has 100 times as great a chance of dying from her labor as one birthing in an industrialized country. For every mile one travels outward toward the Maryland suburbs from downtown Washington, DC on its underground rail system, life expectancy rises by a year – reflecting the race and class inequities in American health. Are the glaring, even larger, international health inequalities also unjust? All of us no doubt think they are grossly unfortunate. Many of us think they are unfair or unjust. Why should some people be at such a health disadvantage through no fault of their own, losers in a natural and social lottery assigning them birth in an unhealthy place? Others of us are troubled by the absence of the kinds of human relationships that ordinarily give rise to the claims of egalitarian justice that we make on each other – for example, being fellow citizens or even interacting in a cooperative scheme. Who has obligations of justice to reduce these international inequalities? And do those obligations hold regardless of how the inequalities came about? What institutions are accountable for addressing them?

In Globalization and Global Justice , Nicole Hassoun offers advice on practical ways to fulfill obligations to the poor. Our recommendations must be well informed by empirical evidence, and so important research on poverty that suggests we sometimes focus inadvertently on the wrong objects in our attempted assistance efforts, deserves consideration here. We also need guidelines on how to choose from among plausible policy options on how to help the poor. I offer one and explain why some of Hassoun s policy recommendations do not meet these criteria

Our aims in this paper are: (1) to indicate some of the many ways in which needs are an important part of the moral landscape, (2) to show that the dominant contemporary moral theories cannot adequately capture the moral significance of needs, indeed, that the dominant theories are inadequate to the extent that they cannot accommodate the insights which attention to needs yield, (3) to offer some sketches that should be helpful to future cartographers charting the domain of morally significant needs, and (4) to consider some anticipated objections to our project and offer some replies.

In this article, we survey some current debates among cosmopolitans and their critics. We begin by surveying some distinctions typically drawn among kinds of cosmopolitanisms, before canvassing some of the diverse varieties of cosmopolitan justice, exploring positions on the content of cosmopolitan duties of justice, and a prominent debate between cosmopolitans and defenders of statist accounts of global justice. We then explore some common concerns about cosmopolitanism – such as whether cosmopolitan commitments are necessarily in tension with other affiliations people typically have and how we should deal with issues concerning a perceived lack of authority in the global domain – and whether these can be addressed. We also look briefly at how the concern with feasibility has led some to take up the challenge of devising public policy that is cosmopolitan in outlook, before offering some concluding remarks on future directions in these debates

Recently there has been a resurgence of interest in cosmopolitanism. Cosmopolitans maintain that no national categories of people deserve special weight and that, instead, all people everywhere should be objects of moral concern. Arguably, the most developed of these accounts is the cosmopolitan democracy model articulated by David Held, so it is not surprising that it has received the most attention and criticism. In this paper, I outline Held’s model of cosmopolitan democracy and consider the objections Will Kymlicka raises to this account. I argue that Kymlicka’s objections do not undermine Held’s central claims and that Held’s cosmopolitanismremains a very promising model that deserves further attention.

In this paper I examine the method Aristotle uses in the inquiry into the nature of happiness in the "Nicomachean Ethics". Through analysis of some of the method's features, I explain why labelling it "the onion approach to developing and fleshing out a hypothesis" is appropriate. I show how Aristotle derives a set of necessary conditions and a set of other criteria, or reliable indicators, which any adequate account of the nature of happiness must meet. There are definite benefits to understanding the strategy in these terms. Having derived a set of criteria that an adequate account must meet, we are in a position to examine which of the two rival hypotheses about the nature of happiness best satisfies the criteria. The life of theoretical study emerges as the clear winner at meeting the criteria Aristotle himself imposes on an adequate account.

Justice and Needs Is it somehow a requirement of justice that we meet people's needs? So, for instance, do people in need of certain goods necessary to sustain life deserve help from those not (similarly) in need because this is a requirement of justice? According to two recent arguments (one offered by Wiggins and the other offered by Braybrooke), justice requires that needs be met. Wiggins uses a rights-based argument and Braybrooke deploys an argument which relies pivotally on the concept of respect. In this article I examine these two strategies for arguing for a connection between justice and meeting needs and show that both strategies not only fail to establish that needs should be met, but, moreover, both strategies face substantial challenges if they are ever to be successful.