Against needs

There are no needs. No one needs anything. When people say “need” as an unqualified noun or verb, they express a concept with no philosophical merit, which should be removed from all conversation. (see §2.1)

1. Unqualified needs

The common concept of “need”, when analysed, is that of an objective desire. Again:

• Needs are desires. You want everything you need. (see §2.2)
• Needs are objective. Others can agree on what your needs are, and they depend in no way upon your preferences.

As such, needs are an incoherent concept. All desires only exist in a subject. So, no one should talk about needs.

2. Qualified needs

Qualified needs are a clear concept, and can remain in speech without causing issues.

2.1. Necessary condition — When people say “need” as a verb with qualification, they often express something perfectly clear: a necessary condition of something. As in, you need three sides to have a triangle, you need fuel to make fire, etc. And this sense can sometimes be seen as a noun too, as in, I saw a need for fuel to keep the fire burning.

2.2. Unwanted needs — Saying, “I don’t want this, but I need it”, always refers to the qualified sense; you want it, but as a means, not as an end.

3. Uses of unqualified needs

People talk about unqualified needs for reasons that are rather rhetorical than philosophical.

3.1. Unwanted help —  Sometimes, they want to pretend that they are fulfilling the desires of others while making no attempt at discovering those desires. Since needs are objective, they can be “determined” by the philanthropist and provided without consultation.

3.2. Unquestionable desire — Sometimes, they want to pretend that their own desires are very important. If you don’t just want something, you need it, then that implies some urgency which others can, and should, recognize.

Some of these rhetorical uses are benign, but others are only confusing people, since they rely upon an incoherent concept.

4. Necessities of life

Some people will say that unqualified needs reduce to qualified ones. They will say that what you need is simply what you need in order to go on living, the necessary conditions for staying alive.

4.1. Life — This is already unclear. Living for how long? A person falling from a plane doesn’t need a parachute to live – he only needs it to live into the next day. The concept lacks rigor.

4.2. Conditions — Suppose that we try to apply the concept broadly – something that is not necessarily attempted by its users – and say that an unqualified need is anything without which you cannot live an entire 80-years-long life.

This still cannot be the case, because concrete things are said to be needs. People are said to need food, shelter and clothing; sometimes they need sanitation, education, and healthcare.

The only one of these things that a human being cannot possibly, in any environment, live 80 years without is food. And that is not how the word “need” is even applied to food – people are not said to need an indefinite quantity of nutrients over indefinite spans of time, which can sometimes be dispensed with in dire conditions. People are said to need definite quantities of definite nutrients, which clearly has nothing to do with staying alive. Instead, the user of the concept of unqualified needs decides that his own standard of “health” is what “living” must mean – he inserts his own desires into a supposedly objective picture.

There are no concrete necessities of life. Anyone speaking of those is engaging in one of the sleights of hand from §3.

5. Cause of belief in needs

Belief in unqualified needs is caused by natural desires. (By which I mean, instinctive desires.) Our natural desires, such as hunger and thirst, press upon us very strongly, and the suffering of others who feel those desires also presses upon our compassion. So we mistakenly think that they are objective. But they are not, and we should not mistake them for anything other than they are.

Remember that, although the evolutionary purpose of natural desires is to keep us alive, we know rationally that fulfilling them is not always necessary to go on living, that we can go on suffering from them for a while if we have other priorities.

Remember also that, sometimes, our experience of such natural desires is disordered – some people feel too much hunger, or too little, so that eating according to their hunger would impair their health.

Natural desires are not needs. They are as subjective as all other desires, and they are no such incoherent thing as “necessities of life”. Our experience of them can be aptly described by the incoherent concept of unqualified need, as a poetic turn of phrase, but never as a technical description. No one who wishes to speak with philosophical clarity should ever speak of needs.