Understanding Human Need 2e. Dean, Hartley

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СКАЧАТЬ continuing and ever-evolving struggle for a better life, for self-fulfilment, for ‘moral progress’ (A. Gilbert, 1992) or emancipation. His famous assertion was a riposte to Feuerbach’s (1841) characterisation of belief in God as an idealised projection of the material or natural essence of humanity itself. Marx effectively adopted and adapted the notion of human essence by treating it not as a mere construct or interpretation, but as an historical reality; not as an explanatory insight but as the constitutive driver of human history. According to Márkus, by referring to the ‘human essence’ Marx was referring to ‘… those characteristics of the real historical existence of mankind which made it possible to comprehend history as a continuous and unified process that has a developmental tendency’ (1978: 61). The human essence, therefore, is not invariant and inherent to the individual human, but dynamic and historically constitutive of the species (see, for example, Margolis, 1992).

      Humanity’s conscious social being and engagement in material productive self-activity provide the substantive dimensions of an encompassing and continual developmental process that is concerned with the realisation of the human essence; a realisation that can only be achieved by direct human intervention under actually prevailing social and material conditions. As a species being a human is defined and constrained not merely by nature, but by her historical context. Her world may be shaped around her by the state, laws, religion, ideology, culture and customs, but these things have been created by humans and can and most certainly will be changed by humans: a process in which others might participate. Her own actions have meaning not only for her and those around her, but also potentially for the processes by which her species might survive or flourish. Human beings, uniquely, have the capacity to contribute to an historical process of species development; to have a purpose of their own making; to participate in defining the future, rather than passively replicating the past. The significance of this will, I hope, become clearer in Chapter 9.

      Humans are vulnerable and needy beings, who yet make their own history. That history has unfolded as a continuing tale characterised by struggles to fulfil not only the need for material survival as a species, but to realise the dynamic essence of humanity; to fulfil not some naturally ordained purpose, but essentially human purposes. These have been on the one hand cooperative struggles with Nature, but on the other, competitive struggles between one another. In the chapters that follow, it will be argued that human needs are constructed through the social determination of human purposes. It may be concluded from the earlier account that the determination of human purposes (and thereby our needs) has been and continues to be contested. Our needs and purposes may be prescribed by prophets, priests and philosophers or by despots, leaders and ideologues; or they may be named and claimed in the process of day-to-day social existence and human being.

Conclusion/Summary

      This chapter has endeavoured to address what it means and what is needed to be a human being. To that end, the chapter has:

      •Discussed the history of the human species. In relation to the age of the Earth, the origin of the Homo Sapiens species is recent, but its development has been rapid and its impact has been immense. Individually, it is a physically frail and vulnerable species, but humans’ cognitive abilities and capacity for social organisation have enabled the species to dominate (with adverse environmental consequences). Demographically the species has flourished, though the fortunes of different parts of the global human population have varied. The advantages associated with new agricultural, industrial and information technologies and evolving forms of social order and governance have been unevenly distributed both within emerging centres of civilisation and between different parts of the world. Relationships and competition for resources, territory or power within and between different human societies have been often conflictual and sometimes violent.

      •Explained different kinds of humanism. For much of human history, human beings sought the meaning of their own existence and that of the world around them through mythological or religious beliefs. But some while before the scientific discovery of evolutionary processes, people began to reflect in secular terms upon the distinctive nature of the human species. It is now generally accepted that human beings were not created in any literal sense by some divine being or supernatural powers, but evolved naturally and may or must be respected, protected or recognised as such, albeit that this can be achieved in different ways, of which we have delineated three: liberal-individualist; solidaristic (which may be inflected in conservative, reformist or revolutionary directions); and supremacist. Each of these particular humanisms understands the human being and her needs in a different way.

      •Offered an account of the human species’ essential characteristics: a humanist approach developed in part from the early anthropological insights of Marx. Four intersecting and interdependent characteristics of the human species are identified: its form of consciousness; its engagement in creative ‘work’; its sociality and social interdependence; and its self-defining historical development. These characteristics are fundamental to and constitutive of the essence of humanity, whose historical potential has perhaps still to be fully realised.

Challenging questions

      1.What is it about human needs that make them axiomatically or essentially human?

      2.What defines humanism and what, if anything, do different kinds of humanism have in common?

       3

       The thin and the thick of need and needing

      This chapter will:

      •develop a discussion of what may be called ‘thin’ needs, connecting them with ‘hedonic’ philosophical ideas of well-being;

      •develop a discussion of what may be called ‘thick’ needs, connecting them with ‘eudaimonic’ philosophical ideas of well-being;

      •consider, in light of these discussions, competing conceptions of human beings’ need for ‘dignity’ on the one hand and ‘care’ on the other.

      This chapter will introduce more fully the particular distinction between ‘thin’ and ‘thick’ conceptions of human need first touched upon in Chapter 1.

The distinction between ‘thin’ and ‘thick’

      The distinction we have drawn between thin and thick interpretations of need and needing is similar to that once made by Kate Soper (1993). And it is related in a more general sense to distinctions between absolute and relative need; between basic and ‘higher’ needs; between vital needs and agency needs; between procedural and substantive definitions of need; or between what people need to survive as opposed to what they need to flourish. But the distinction we are making here also resonates with that which ethnographic anthropologists make between thin and thick descriptions of human life (for example, Geertz, 1973). We should not assume that thick interpretations are always better than thin ones: they may be richer, subtler, more complex, but will not necessarily result in just outcomes, and they are no less likely than other interpretations to be misguided. Michael Walzer (1994) draws on the same idea to distinguish between thin and thick moralities. He makes it clear that, in a pluralistic world, thin (or СКАЧАТЬ