Approximation properties of torsion classes

Abstract We strengthen a result of Bagaria and Magidor ( Trans. Amer. Math. Soc . 366 (2014), no. 4, 1857–1877) about the relationship between large cardinals and torsion classes of abelian groups, and prove that the Maximum Deconstructibility principle introduced in Cox ( J. Pure Appl. Algebra 226 (2022), no. 5) requires large cardinals; it sits, implication‐wise, between Vopěnka's Principle and the existence of an ‐strongly compact cardinal. While deconstructibility of a class of modules always implies the precovering property by Saorín and Šťovíček ( Adv. Math . 228 (2011), no. 2, 968–1007), the concepts are (consistently) nonequivalent, even for classes of abelian groups closed under extensions, homomorphic images, and colimits.