Political philosophy and Social Welfare

# POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL WELFARE

What are our obligations to the poor, needy and deprived? This question is crucial to any debate about the future extent of the welfare state, and the essays in this volume analyse and discuss a possible range of answers to it. It is argued that an understanding of our obligations, and other central concepts in this area such as social justice, rights and community are related to the fundamental questions which political philosophy has to bear on the issues of social welfare and social provision. The authors discuss such issues on the basis of the sense of rights towards the right of welfare and the concepts of ‘community’ alongside a consideration of normative political philosophy which raises positively for the centrality of the obligation to meet the various demands of social need in our society, and will be of interest to students of philosophy, social policy and administration.