Originally published in 1981, The Problem of Human Needs and the Critique of Civilisation is a sociological and philosophical exploration of how human needs are understood and addressed within the framework of civilization. It belongs to the author’s life-long study of the presuppositions of, and preconditions to, the cycle of empires, including recently, Reading Hobbes Backwards: Leviathan the Papal Monarchy and Islam (2024), and earlier studies of Ancient Egypt, Royal Persons: Patriarchal Monarchy and the Feminine Principle (1990), and of the Assyrian, Babylonian and Islamic empires, Western Republicanism and the Oriental Prince (1992).
The book critically examines the historical and theoretical underpinnings of human needs, drawing on Marxist and other critical traditions to analyse the relationship between individual needs and societal structures. The author investigates the ways in which civilizations have historically failed to meet human needs adequately, critiquing the systems and ideologies that perpetuate inequality and alienation. The work also engages with the concept of human rights, questioning their historical development and the lack of consensus on their application.
Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements. 1. The Problem of Human Needs 2. Needs in Hellenistic and Enlightenment Materialism 3. Rousseau on Natural and Artificial Needs 4. The Early Socialists on Needs and Society 5. Civil Society as a ‘System of Needs’ in Hegel 6. Marx on Human and Inhuman Needs 7. Jean-Paul Sartre on Needs and Desires 8. Reich and Fromm on Needs and Social Character 9. Marcuse on True and False Needs 10. Farther Reaches of Need Theory 11. Agnes Heller and Ivan Illich on the Structure of Needs 12. William Leiss on the Problem of Needs and Commodities. Conclusion. Appendix: ‘Needs’ as a Concept. Bibliography. Index.
About the Author :
Patricia Springborg (MA Hons, University of Canterbury, NZ, 1968; DPhil. Oxon, 1979), was a student of J.G.A. Pocock and taught political theory at the University of Canterbury, NZ, the University of Pennsylvania and UC Berkeley in the US, the University of Bolzano in Italy, and was for 30 years lecturer and then professor of Political Theory in the Government Department of the University of Sydney (1974–2005). She has been a stipendiary fellow at Institutes for Advanced Study in Washington DC, Berlin, Oxford and Uppsala, and was the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Research & Writing Grant held at the The Brookings Institution, Washington, DC. She has 8 authored and co-authored books, including The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes’s Leviathan (2007); and the first English translation and critical edition of Hobbes’s Historia Ecclesiastica (Paris, 2008); as well as some 80 articles in refereed journals and international collections. Most recently she was Guest Professor and Researcher at the Humboldt University, Berlin (2013–22).
