Preface

TL;DRAbstract

This book is about human needs and politics. These are vast, complex areas of human action, interaction, conflict and value, and the reader may wonder why I chose to tackle both topics and not one or the other. The reason is simple. Quite early on I realised that both needs and politics have to be understood in their unexpurgated historical, causal, cognitive and normative contexts, and an understanding of one involves an understanding of the other. I do not profess to have got very far in either task, or in my related task of developing proposals for the evaluation of needs and institutions. That is for the reader to judge. However, the fact that I take this view about how to understand needs and politics explains why I cover two big topics in one relatively small book, and why I hope this contribution to political philosophy may also be of use to moral and legal philosophers, political scientists, economists, sociologists and policy-makers.

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