Abraham Maslow: Higher and Lower Needs

“The basic needs arrange themselves in a fairly definite hierarchy on the basis of the principle of relative potency. Thus the safety need is stronger than the love need, because it dominates the organism in various demonstrable ways when both needs are frustrated. In this sense, the physiological needs (which are themselves ordered in a subhierarchy) are stronger than the safety needs, which are stronger than the love needs, which in turn are stronger than the esteem needs, which are stronger than those idiosyncratic needs we have called the need for self-actualization. […]

Such a point of view, namely, that (1) the higher needs and lower needs have different properties and (2) that these higher needs as well as the lower needs must be included in the repertory of basic and given human nature (not as different from and opposed to it) must have many and revolutionary consequences for psychological and philosophical theory. Most civilizations, along with their theories of politics, education, religion, etc., have been based on the exact contradictory of this belief. On the whole, they have assumed the biological animal, and instinctoid aspects of human nature to be severely limited to the physiological needs for food, sex, and the like.”

— Excerpted from Abraham Maslow’s “Motivation and Personality” (1954)

Carl Menger: Utility and Value

“Utility is the capacity of a thing to serve for the satisfaction of human needs, and hence (provided the utility is recognized) it is a general prerequisite of goods-character. Non-economic goods have utility as well as economic goods, since they are just as capable of satisfying our needs. With these goods also, their capacity to satisfy needs must be recognized by men, since they could not otherwise acquire goods-character. […] [O]nly the latter, in addition to utility, possesses also that significance for us that we call value. […]

Value is thus nothing inherent in goods, no property of them, nor an independent thing existing by itself. It is a judgment economizing men make about the importance of the goods at their disposal for the maintenance of their lives and well-being. Hence value does not exist outside the consciousness of men. It is, therefore, also quite erroneous to call a good that has value to economizing individuals a ‘value,’ or for economists to speak of ‘values’ as of independent real things, and to objectify value in this way. For the entities that exist objectively are always only particular things or quantities of things, and their value is something fundamentally different from the things themselves[.]”

— Excerpted from Carl Menger’s “Principles of Economics” (1871)

Aristotle: Eudaimonia (Happiness)

“Let us resume our inquiry and state, in view of the fact that all knowledge and every pursuit aims at some good, what it is that we say political science aims at and what is the highest of all goods achievable by action. Verbally there is very general agreement; for both the general run of men and people of superior refinement say that it is happiness, and identify living well and doing well with being happy; but with regard to what happiness is they differ, and the many do not give the same account as the wise. For the former think it is some plain and obvious thing, like pleasure, wealth, or honour; they differ, however, from one another- and often even the same man identifies it with different things, with health when he is ill, with wealth when he is poor; but, conscious of their ignorance, they admire those who proclaim some great ideal that is above their comprehension.”

— Excerpted from Aristotle’s “Nicomachean Ethics” (350 BCE)

Ikigai (Purpose)

Deeply ingrained in the Japanese culture, the notion of ikigai encompasses what could be described as the ultimate goal. Although it has no direct English translation, ikigai is one’s subjective well-being. It might represent the one thing to look forward to at the end of the day, but it could also describe an individual’s entire life purpose.