Understanding Human Need 2e. Dean, Hartley

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СКАЧАТЬ forms of human understanding and the pragmatic possibilities they create for agreed action among people with different moral beliefs. Insofar as there clearly is a moral dimension to understandings of human need, this captures one of the ways in which we can consider the plurality of meanings attaching to concepts of need.

      The meaning this book is seeking to bring to the distinction between thin and thick can most helpfully be achieved by linking it to yet another concept connected to human need; that of human well-being. There is a distinction to be made between being ‘well enough’ and being ‘very well’. To be well enough is to be satisfied with what you can have and do in life. To be very well is, perhaps, to be ‘truly’ fulfilled as a human being. To be ‘not well’ implies some kind of deprivation. Significantly, of course, one can’t be ‘excessively well’: that would be a contradiction in terms. The notion of well-being is capable of invoking not just practical, but moral or ethical considerations about the extent and the limits of human need; not only a ‘thin’ conception of what the lives of human beings necessarily do entail, but also a ‘thick’ conception of what a human life ought to, or potentially could, entail. Needing equates on the one hand with existing and on the other with being: that is to say, it has both existential and ontological meaning. Needing equates on the one hand to what a human being requires to lead a tolerable or even contented life in the social and environmental context in which she finds herself and on the other what she might need to live a reflexive and purposeful life. And different meanings – as will be seen – can have different implications for priorities and judgements when it comes to the recognition of substantive needs.

      One recent introductory textbook has defined academic social policy as the study of human well-being or, more particularly, the social relations and systems that promote or impair human well-being (H. Dean, 2019: 1). ‘Well-being’, though hardly a new concept, has become yet another in a succession of fashionable, insightful, yet slippery concepts relevant to human need (for example, Gough & McGregor, 2007; Jordan, 2008; B. Searle, 2008). The advantage of well-being as a term is that it can turn our attention to the positive aspects of social policy, as opposed to negative aspects relating to the management of social problems. It is untainted by the pejorative connotation that attaches in certain quarters to the term ‘welfare’ (Daly, 2011). It also places the emphasis on human ‘being’ as opposed to ‘having’ or ‘doing’ (Fromm, 1976). It has been acknowledged nonetheless by Gough and McGregor that ‘wellbeing is still a novel category in applied social science, such that no settled consensus on its meaning has yet emerged’ (2007: 5). Well-being can be defined in relation to its opposite, depending on just how the opposite is conceived. Gough and McGregor (2007) define well-being as the opposite of ‘ill-being’ or poverty. Jordan (2008) goes so far as to define it as the opposite of ‘welfare’ in the sense attributed to the term within neo-liberal discourse: well-being he sees as the realisation of what he terms ‘social value’; welfare as the realisation of individual utility. Taylor (2018) similarly juxtaposes utilitarian notions of subjective well-being with relational or intersubjective notions of well-being. These suggestions illustrate the distinction that I am characterising as that between thin and thick conceptions of human need.

      This brings us to the essence of the fundamental distinction between the ‘hedonic’ and the ‘eudaimonic’. The etymological origins of these two terms are to be found in classical Greek philosophy. Hedonism was concerned with pleasure; eudaimonia with spiritual well-being (see Box 3.1). The Socratic tradition recognised both, but the traditions have diverged. The Epicureans supposed that a good life entailed a justly moderated pursuit of aesthetic pleasure (mental as well as physical) and practical avoidance of pain or discomfort (see T. Fitzpatrick, 2018). Aristotle (c. 350 bce) contended that leading a good or ethical life means more than pleasure-seeking; it entails a quest for virtue and the self-realisation that comes through social engagement, civic duty and creative activity (see also Fitzpatrick, 2008: Ch. 4; MacIntyre, 2007). It has been attempted elsewhere (H. Dean, 2008b) to argue that the hedonic-eudaimonic distinction is reflected in the different ways in which post-Western Enlightenment concepts of citizenship and associated approaches in social policy have been constructed. This chapter will extend that argument further.

      Box 3.1: The etymological roots of the word eudaimonia

      Historically speaking, the word ‘daimon’ (or its derivatives, such as daemon or demon) has referred:

      •either to what might be called a person’s own ‘soul’ or their true or ‘noumenal’ self;

      •or else to an independent ‘spirit’ - whether good or bad – for example, a guardian angel on the one hand or an evil incubus on the other.

      During the last few hundred years, it is this last-mentioned imagery – of the evil demon – that has tended to hold sway. However, in Philip Pullman’s ‘His Dark Materials’ children’s book trilogy (Northern Lights [1995], The Subtle Knife [1997] and The Amber Spyglass [2000], published by Scholastic Ltd.) each of the human characters to be found living in a fictional world, parallel to our own, has a ‘daemon’ in the form of an animal familiar. Such daemons reflect or embody the noumenal self of the person to whom they are uniquely attached. They are essential to the integrity of that person as a human being and accompany her or him throughout that person’s life. This is a contemporary example of a way of imagining our daimonic existence.

      The prefix ‘eu’ implies ‘wellness’ or ‘goodness’ and so exposes the supposed ‘spiritual’ dimension of our human existence to moral judgement as to the nature of human virtue. Axiomatically, this frames the person in her social context. Through the concept of eudaimonia this book will not concern itself with the many religious interpretations of spiritual well-being, but with secular interpretations bearing upon the social context through which personal identity and the human ‘self’ are ethically or morally constituted.

      We are seeking here to drive the analysis deeper. Recalling Titmuss’ assertion (cited in Chapter 1) that no division can be made between ‘individual’ and ‘social’ need, the distinction between ‘thin’ and ‘thick’ need that we explore in this chapter embraces the axiomatic connectedness of the individual and the social, while nevertheless examining differences in conceptual emphasis. That which is thin and hedonically conceptualised is focused upon individual subjective experiences of needing. That which is thick and eudaimonically conceptualised is focused on the relational and intersubjective context of needing.

Thin needs and hedonic notions of well-being

      Mention was made in Chapter 1 of everyday ‘moralistic’ and ‘economistic’ meanings that may attach to human needs. As to the former, these are premised at root on the ‘thin’ morality characterised by Hobbes’ (1651) notion of society as a ‘war of all against all’ and the minimum necessary restraints that should be imposed upon the freedom of the individual in pursuit of her own hedonic well-being. At their most extreme, such meanings may become fundamentally asocial and/or misanthropic. They imply that a failure to achieve self-sufficiency and to meet one’s own needs СКАЧАТЬ