The paper studies the concept of need as a border, which is located between nature and human history and helps to explain the relationship between them. The first part shows, analyzing the views of Paci, Sartre, Marcuse, and of some critics of the very notion of need, such as Lyotard, Deleuze and Guattari, how need can’t be reduced just to nature or to scarcity. In the second part, studying some works of Heller, Rovatti and Marcuse, the paper claims that need can neither be reduced just to a historical or political dimension. Thus, the third part, analyzing some observations by Marx and by some of his readers, argues that need – reducible neither to an only natural or economic dimension, nor just to a historical or political one – constitutes a “bridge”, capable of clarifying the passage between these areas.
