This book investigates the foundations of a basic minimum, with an eye toward developing a workable welfarist alternative to the dominant capabilities approach. However, I see the argument of this book at something of a subdisciplinary crossroads. Much of the most important work on the nature of a basic minimum, at least in the last half-century or so, has been conducted by focusing on the justice of political systems. This focus is certainly understandable. However, I hold that new avenues of inquiry can be opened by considering the moral fundamentals of alternative theories of the basic minimum, and bringing to bear concepts that generally appear in the normative ethical and metaethical literature: moral reasons, welfare, impersonal versus personal value, and so forth. Some thinkers interested in a basic minimum might find my methodology alienating, lacking engagement with the genuine problems of the world for which a basic minimum is a required normative tool. But I hold that if we articulate a welfarist basic minimum and its precise theory of moral reasons, etc., we find that a view that has been previously thought unworkable becomes comparatively attractive as a theory of political morality. I take this as progress.

However, credit for whatever progress this book makes on the topic of the basic minimum, or on any other topic for that matter, is not mine alone. As with any person who undertakes writing a book in philosophy, I have incurred many debts. I'd like to mention a few now.