Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- 1 Privacy: philosophical dimensions of the literature
- 2 Social distance and the veil
- 3 The origins of modern claims to privacy
- 4 The right to privacy [the implicit made explicit]
- 5 Privacy [a legal analysis]
- 6 Privacy as an aspect of human dignity: an answer to Dean Prosser
- 7 Privacy [a moral analysis]
- 8 Privacy, freedom, and respect for persons
- 9 Privacy and self-incrimination
- 10 Intimacy and privacy
- 11 The right to privacy
- 12 Why privacy is important
- 13 Privacy, intimacy, and personhood
- 14 Privacy: some arguments and assumptions
- 15 An economic theory of privacy
- 16 Privacy and the limits of law
- 17 Privacy and intimate information
- Selected bibliography
- Index of names
8 - Privacy, freedom, and respect for persons
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- 1 Privacy: philosophical dimensions of the literature
- 2 Social distance and the veil
- 3 The origins of modern claims to privacy
- 4 The right to privacy [the implicit made explicit]
- 5 Privacy [a legal analysis]
- 6 Privacy as an aspect of human dignity: an answer to Dean Prosser
- 7 Privacy [a moral analysis]
- 8 Privacy, freedom, and respect for persons
- 9 Privacy and self-incrimination
- 10 Intimacy and privacy
- 11 The right to privacy
- 12 Why privacy is important
- 13 Privacy, intimacy, and personhood
- 14 Privacy: some arguments and assumptions
- 15 An economic theory of privacy
- 16 Privacy and the limits of law
- 17 Privacy and intimate information
- Selected bibliography
- Index of names
Summary
When your mind is set on mating
It is highly irritating
To see an ornithologist below:
Though it may be nature-study,
To a bird it's merely bloody
Awful manners. Can't he see that he's de trop!
from A.N.L. Munby's “Bird Watching”Introduction
If two people retire to the privacy of the bushes, they go where they expect to be unobserved. What they do is done privately, or in private, if they are not actually seen doing it. Should they later advertise or publish what they were about, what was private would then become public knowledge. Or they may have been mistaken in thinking their retreat private—they may have been in full view of passersby all the time. One's private affairs, however, are private in a different sense. It is not that they are kept out of sight or from the knowledge of others that makes them private. Rather, they are matters that it would be inappropriate for others to try to find out about, much less report on, without one's consent; one complains if they are publicized precisely because they are private. Similarly, a private room remains private in spite of uninvited intruders, for, unlike the case of the couple in the bushes, falsifying the expectation that no one will intrude is not a logically sufficient ground for saying that something private in this sense is not private after all.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Philosophical Dimensions of PrivacyAn Anthology, pp. 223 - 244Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1984
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