CLASSIFICATION OF HUMAN NEEDS: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

Abstract

The article reviews and analyzes the classifications of human needs in various social and humanitarian sciences such as: psychology, philosophy, economics and law. The relevance of our research lies in the need for an interdisciplinary study of the nature of the needs themselves, their multifaceted role in human life and the need to combine linguistic analysis of needs with social, philosophical, economic and legal approaches. In the work, needs are considered in an interdisciplinary dimension with an emphasis on the importance of conducting a philological study of needs in order to highlight their role through the lens of language. The research considers various classifications of needs in:1) philosophy – D. Wiggins, G. Thompson, D. Bradshaw; 2) psychology – A. Maslow, Max-Neef’s theory, 3) economics – A. Smith, M. Tugan- Baranovsky, 4) jurisprudence and law – S. Rudnytsky, P. Rabinovich. In the analyzed classifications, attention is paid to the linguistic interpretation of needs, which reveals the role of language as the main tool for conceptualizing needs. Based on the considered classifications, the main lexical units that directly illustrate needs in different types of discourse and can be used in the course of corpus research of the mega-concept NEEDS are identified, such as: needs, desire, motive, love, food, air, water, breath, safety, love, self- realization. The importance of using these lexemes in the course of corpus research of texts belonging to different types of discourse is emphasized.It was found that each classification has its advantages and disadvantages, and it is practically impossible to develop a universal classification of needs due to their diversity and different approaches to their interpretation and comprehension. It was found that the main disadvantage of the classification of A. Maslow’s pyramid is that it does not reflect the dynamic nature of the needs themselves. In view of this, we have presented our own classification of needs in the form of an atomic model, which more reflects the changing nature of human life. The research materials and our proposed classification of needs, similar to the atomic model, can be useful for philologists, philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, lawyers, and economists in their fields of research into the role of needs in human life. The prospects for further research based on the classification of needs developed by us are indicated, which consist in conducting a corpus and comparative philological study of needs in the texts of different types of discourses for a dissertation study of the mega-concept NEEDS in American and Ukrainian linguistic cultures.