Necessary Goods: Our Responsibilities to Meet Others Needs

Product Description
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. Much contemporary discourse about moral and political matters employs the language of needs;
Necessary Goods is an important book for philosophers and political theorists tackling the ever-present problem of our responsibilities towards others.
Contributors: John Baker, David Braybrooke, Gillian Brock, David Copp, Len Doyal, Harry Frankfurt, Robert Goodin, Charles Jones, Martha Nussbaum, Onora O'Neill, James Sterba, David Wiggins.
Review
A number of important issues are pursued in the essays. ...their collection in a single volume is particularly handy. The philosophers appearing here are leading thinkers in the field and represent a broad spectrum of opinion. The book would be useful for any upper-level course in political philosophy. ―
Oxford Academic Journals

This collection gathers together some of the more important philosophical essays on needs from the last 15 years―some reprinted, some re-written, some new. This collection provides a valuable overview of the state of philosophical reflection on the moral status of needs. . . . An appropriate and useful addition for an advanced undergraduate or graduate course in ethical theory. -- Jon Mandle, SUNY, Albany ―
Ethics: An International Journal of Social, Political, and Legal Philosophy
About the Author
Gillian Brock is a senior lecturer in philosophy at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. Her articles have appeared in many journals, including
Ethics,
Analysis,
Public Affairs Quarterly,
Philosophia,
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review,
The Journal of Business Ethics, and
Business Ethics Quarterly.