Marlowe Fardell

This paper presents a new analysis of the concept of non-instrumental need, and, using it, demonstrates how a need-satisfaction theory of well-being is much more plausible than might otherwise be supposed. Its thesis is that in at least some contexts of evaluation a central part of some persons’ well-being consists in their satisfying certain “personal needs”. Unlike common conceptions of other non-instrumental needs, which make those out to be moralised, universal, and minimal, personal needs are expansive and particular to particular persons, generated rather by persons’ non-moral personal commitments. Against objections to the contrary, I show how these are genuine necessities, since unlike mere desires and freely escapable aims, personal needs constitute objective, inescapable, and non-compensable practical requirements. The personal-need-satisfaction theory of well-being combines objectivity with subject-dependence in novel ways, and motivates well-being pluralism at the level of individual agency. Implicating necessity as it does in the structure of individual well-being, this account presents a robust challenge to ethical and political theories that rely on the intrapersonal aggregation of well-being to be unproblematic.

Amartya Sen’s critique of the concept of need and his case for the superiority of capability as a measure of advantage have been highly influential. However, Sen perpetuates a caricature. Needs are not necessarily mere instrumental resource requirements for the achievement of ends; the valuable ends of people’s lives can themselves constitute needs, as can freedoms. Indeed, these ideas are already present in basic needs theory. Moreover, official disavowals notwithstanding, expansive notions of need are implicitly present in certain important theories of capabilities and other advantages. Objections to need can be undermined in part by showing how this is the case. Aversion to need is unfortunate, because the concept offers powerful theoretical resources that could be better exploited if negative preconceptions were overcome and need were explicitly embraced. However, this proposal is friendly. It is not that need should replace, but that it can augment, other concepts. Drawing on need may assist with: selecting important capabilities or dimensions of advantage; marking a distinction of seriousness between these and relatively trivial advantages (and buttressing claims to the ethical or political priority of the former); explaining the incommensurability/non-substitutability of certain capabilities and dimensions of advantage, and; defining notions of sufficiency.