Need is a requirement for something. It ensues out of what is missing for a feeling being, out of what is lacking, out of what is not there. Need appears in time: it commences after distortion, proceeds, and ceases when satisfied. A sensitive creature perceives and acts according to needs in the context of time. Purely deterministic, need is just a push away with a tendency but not with a definite goal; in fact, the teleology of need is given only in the more complex want. Depraved of clear cut object, need is not qualitatively but quantitatively defined as relatively measurable activity. The need consequently develops to insatiable need, vanished need, and diminishing need.
Historical Backdrop
• PLATO Symposium: the myth of Love's birth.
• JOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTE Science of Knowledge: the concept of yearning in the context of feeling of limitation.
• FREDERIC BASTIAT Harmonies of Political Economy: need, taste, want.
• JOHN BATES CLARK The Philosophy of Wealth: contentment, ambition, enjoyment.
• GEORG SIMMEL Philosophy of Money: the doctrine of separation of object and subject through the feeling of desire.
• THEODORE LEVITT Marketing Myopia: need.
• JEAN-PAUL SARTRE Being and Nothingness: desire as lack of being; Critique of Dialectical Reason: the most fundamental totalisation in the first negation of negation.
• GILLES DELEUZE and FELIX GUATTARI Capitalism and Schizophrenia: need.
