Abstract
In the previous chapter I argued that a satisfactory account of social policy defined it as being concerned with specific dimensions of human well-being. The object of the present chapter is to discuss the considerations that are involved in determining the nature of human well-being, for the purposes of public policy, and in understanding how conceptions of human well-being may be related to a broader structure of political argument. The reason for undertaking this enquiry is simple. Unless we can provide reasons for placing specific emphasis on certain aspects of human well-being, the practice of much social policy will remain unjustified, and to that extent politically insecure.
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Notes and References
Compare: Derek Parfit, ‘Later Selves and Moral Principles’ in Alan Montefiore (ed.). Philosophy and Personal Relations (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973) pp. 137–69;
Amélie Oksenberg Rorty (ed.). The Identities of Persons (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1976); Susan Mendus, ‘Marital Faithfulness’, Philosophy (forthcoming).
I borrow the term ‘projects’ from Bernard Williams, Utilitarianism: For and Against (Cambridge University Press, 1973).
I have come to think it preferable to the idea of a ‘plan of life’, which suggests a rational ordering of projects into an optimal combination, and therefore is too structured an idea for present purposes. For the concept of a plan of life, see: Charles Fried, An Anatomy of Values (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1970) pp. 97–101;
David Miller, Social Justice (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976) pp. 133–43;
and John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972) pp. 407–16.
Joseph Butler, Fifteen Sermons, ed. W. R. Matthews (London: Bell, 1969) passim.
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty in H. B. Acton (ed.), J. S. Mill, Utilitarianism, On Liberty, and Considerations on Representative Government (London: Dent, 1972) p. 74.
Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, trans. Rex Warner (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972) p. 147.
W. G. Runciman, Relative Deprivation and Social Justice (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966) ch. 10.
Gabriel A. Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963) ch. 6.
See A. K. Sen, On Economic Inequality (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973) pp. 43–5;
‘On Weights and Measures: Informational Constraints on Collective Choice’, Econometrica, XLV (1977) pp. 1539–72.
The example is adapted from J. E. Meade, The Just Economy: Principles of Political Economy (London: Allen & Unwin, 1976) IV, p. 59.
L. Robbins, An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science (London: Macmillan, 1932) p. 132.
J. Bradshaw, ‘A Taxonomy of Need’, New Society, no. 496 (30 March 1972) pp. 640–3.
Compare B. M. Barry, Political Argument, p. 48; K. Minogue, The Liberal Mind (London: Methuen, 1963) p. 104.
For the details of such examples see Mancur Olson, ‘The Treatment of Externalities in National Income Statistics’ in Lowdon Wingo and Alan Evans (eds), Public Economics and the Quality of Life (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977).
See also William D. Nordhaus and James Tobin, ‘Is Growth Obsolete?’ in Milton Moss (ed.). The Measurement of Economic and Social Performance (New York: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1973) pp. 509–32.
See, for example, Mary Douglas and Baron Isherwood, The World of Goods (New York: Basic Books, 1979);
Peter Townsend, Poverty in the United Kingdom (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1980).
Alfred Marshall, Principles of Economics, 8th edn (London: Macmillan, 1920, reset, 1949) pp. 57–8.
Compare James S. Fishkin, Tyranny and Legitimacy: A Critique of Political Theories (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979) ch.5.
B. Seebohm Rowntree, Poverty: A Study of Town Life, 2nd edn (London: Macmillan, 1902) ch. 4.
David Piachaud, The Cost of a Child (London: Child Poverty Action Group, 1979).
On these problems see: Barry, Political Argument, pp. 62–6; Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously (London: Duckworth, 1977) pp. 234–9; James S. Fishkin, Tyranny and Legitimacy, pp. 26–32;
H. L. A. Hart, ‘Between Utility and Rights’, Columbia Law Review, LXXIX 5 (1979) pp. 828–46;
Alan Ware, The Logic of Party Democracy (London: Macmillan, 1978) pp. 19–31.
Compare Bruce A. Ackerman, Social Justice in the Liberal State (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1981) pp. 368–9.
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© 1983 Albert Weale
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Weale, A. (1983). Welfare, Needs and the Theory of the Good. In: Political Theory and Social Policy. Studies in Social Policy. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17144-6_2
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