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Privacy, Intimacy, and Isolation
Privacy is a puzzling concept. From the backyard to the bedroom, everyday life gives rise to an abundance of privacy claims. In the legal sphere, privacy is invoked with respect to issues including abortion, marriage, and sexuality. Yet privacy is surrounded by a mire of theoretical debate. Certain philosophers argue that privacy is neither conceptually nor morally distinct from other interests, while numerous legal scholars point to the apparently disparate interests involved in constitutional and tort privacy law. By arguing that intimacy is the core of privacy, including privacy law, Inness undermines privacy skepticism, providing a strong theoretical foundation for many of our everyday and legal privacy claims, including the controversial constitutional right to privacy.
176 pages, Hardcover
First published May 21, 1992
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June 11, 2016
Julie Inness draws from legal and philosophical writings to define privacy by examining its "function" and "content" and to identify "the nature and source of the value" we give it.
Privacy is sometimes seen as the restriction of access to oneself (where such access can take the form of information-gathering or of some other kind like physically entering a home) and, rather differently, as the assumption of control over decision-making. Those who claim that privacy is concerned only with the latter will sometimes try to reduce privacy to the value of freedom in general. Other common debates about privacy include whether its scope is limited to intimate concerns; how much motivations matter in examining relevant behaviors; and whether its importance comes from the consequentialist agenda that privacy supports relationships or from the deontologic agenda that privacy respects individuals' agency. Resolving these debates is important to giving an account of privacy, including understanding its "normative force." (p. 6)
Inness argues that privacy is about both information/access and control and that it is staked on intimacy. In her definition, "privacy is the state of possessing control over a realm of intimate decisions, which includes decisions about intimate access, intimate information, and intimate actions...privacy is the state of possessing control over decisions concerning matters that draw their meaning and value from the agent's love, liking, and care." (p. 140) It supports relationships in this way: "By according the agent this zone of nonintervention, we convey to her that she is truly an autonomous originator of intimacy, a person who has control over a context, which she is free to imbue with emotional significance." (p. 110) In other words, if we are to genuinely like people and things it has to be because we feel that way all on our own and not because someone else commands us to do so. Privacy is the way in which we give each other the space to do that.
Privacy is sometimes seen as the restriction of access to oneself (where such access can take the form of information-gathering or of some other kind like physically entering a home) and, rather differently, as the assumption of control over decision-making. Those who claim that privacy is concerned only with the latter will sometimes try to reduce privacy to the value of freedom in general. Other common debates about privacy include whether its scope is limited to intimate concerns; how much motivations matter in examining relevant behaviors; and whether its importance comes from the consequentialist agenda that privacy supports relationships or from the deontologic agenda that privacy respects individuals' agency. Resolving these debates is important to giving an account of privacy, including understanding its "normative force." (p. 6)
Inness argues that privacy is about both information/access and control and that it is staked on intimacy. In her definition, "privacy is the state of possessing control over a realm of intimate decisions, which includes decisions about intimate access, intimate information, and intimate actions...privacy is the state of possessing control over decisions concerning matters that draw their meaning and value from the agent's love, liking, and care." (p. 140) It supports relationships in this way: "By according the agent this zone of nonintervention, we convey to her that she is truly an autonomous originator of intimacy, a person who has control over a context, which she is free to imbue with emotional significance." (p. 110) In other words, if we are to genuinely like people and things it has to be because we feel that way all on our own and not because someone else commands us to do so. Privacy is the way in which we give each other the space to do that.
Displaying 1 of 1 review