ABSTRACT
The higher the level of abstraction at which any argument for universal needs is cast, the less controversial it is likely to prove, but the more open it becomes to the charge of being vacuously uninformative as a guide to specific welfare provision. Not even the most committed cultural relativist on needs is likely to disagree with Aristotle when he remarks in Metaphysics that, 'when life or existence are impossible (or when the good cannot be attained) without certain conditions, these conditions are "necessary", and this cause is itself a kind of necessity'.1 If, that is, we construe this as an argument to the effect that all human beings have a need for whatever is essential to the maintenance of life and the provision of the 'good', then few will dissent from it.
