Need - Other Views

Other Views

The concept of intellectual need has been studied in education.

In his 1844 Paris Manuscripts, Karl Marx famously defined humans as "creatures of need" or "needy creatures" who experienced suffering in the process of learning and working to meet their needs. These needs were both physical needs as well as moral, emotional and intellectual needs. According to Marx, human development is characterized by the fact that in the process of meeting their needs, humans develop new needs, implying that at least to some extent they make and remake their own nature. This idea is discussed in more detail by the Hungarian philosopher Ágnes Heller in A Theory of Need in Marx (London: Allison and Busby, 1976). Political economy professor Michael Lebowitz has developed the Marxian interpretation of needs further in two editions of his book Beyond Capital.

Professor György Márkus systematized Marx's ideas about needs as follows: humans are different from other animals because their vital activity, work, is mediated to the satisfaction of needs (an animal who manufactures tools to produce other tools or his/her satisfactors), which makes a human being a universal natural being capable to turn the whole nature into the subject of his/her needs and his/her activity, and develops his/her needs and abilities (essential human forces) and develops himself/herself, a historical-universal being. Work generates the breach of the animal subject-object fusion, thus generating the possibility of human conscience and self-conscience, which tend to universality (the universal conscious being). A human being's conditions as a social being are given by work, but not only by work as it is not possible to live a human being without a relationship with others: work is social because human beings work for each other with means and abilities produced by prior generations. Human beings are also free entities able to accomplish, during their lifetime, the objective possibilities generated by social evolution, on the basis of their conscious decisions. Freedom should be understood both in a negative (freedom to decide and to establish relationships) and a positive sense (dominion over natural forces and development of human creativity, of the essential human forces. To sum up, the essential interrelated traits of human beings are: a) work is their vital activity; b) human beings are conscious beings; c) human beings are social beings; d) human beings tend to universality, which manifests in the three previous traits and make human beings natural-historical-universal, social-universal and universal conscious entities, and e) human beings are free.

In his texts about what he calls "moral economics", professor Julio Boltvinik Kalinka asserts that the ideas exposed by David Wiggins about needs are correct but insufficient: needs are of a normative nature but they are also factual. These "gross ethical concepts" (as stated by Hilary Putnam) should also include an evaluation: Ross Fitzgerald's criticism of Maslow's ideas rejects the concept of objective human needs and uses instead the concept of preferences. They assume, just like many other logical positivists, that values cannot be rational and assert, therefore, that the definition of poverty threshold, a task charged with values, is an arbitrary action of researchers, an assumption which implies a narrow view of poverty.

Marshall Rosenberg's model of Compassionate Communication, also known as Nonviolent Communication (NVC) makes the distinction between universal human needs (what sustains and motivates human life) and specific strategies used to meet these needs. In contrast to Maslow, Rosenberg's model does not place needs in a hierarchy. In this model, feelings are seen as indicators of when human needs are met or unmet. One of the intended outcomes of Rosenberg's model is to support humans in developing an awareness of what life-sustaining needs are arising within them and others moment by moment so that they may more effectively and compassionately find strategies to meet their own needs as well as contribute to meeting the needs of others.

People also talk about the needs of a community or organization. Such needs might include demand for a particular type of business, for a certain government program or entity, or for individuals with particular skills. This is an example of metonymy in language and presents with the logical problem of reification.