This new book by Beate R össler is a work of real quality and originality on an extremely topical issue: the issue of privacy and the relations between the private and the public.R össler investigates the reasons why we value privacy and why we ought to value it. In the context of modern, liberal societies, R össler develops a theory of the private which links privacy and autonomy in a constitutive way: privacy is a necessary condition to lead an autonomous life. The book develops a theory of freedom and autonomy which sees the ability to pose the "practical question " of how one wants to live, of what a person strives to be, at the centre of the modern idea of autonomy.The question of privacy is emerging as an increasingly important topic in social and political theory and is central to many current debates in law, the media and politics. The Value of Privacy will be widely recognised to be a classic contribution to the subject.

Beate Rossler is Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Amsterdam.

Acknowledgements

vii

1 Introduction

1

(18)

1 Discourses on privacy

2

(2)

2 Privacy: conceptual clarifications

4

(6)

3 The framework of liberal democracy

10

(3)

4 Cultural differences: autonomy and authenticity

13

(3)

5 A comment on the method

16

(1)

6 Privacy and autonomy: the line of argument

17

(2)

2 Equal Freedom, Equal Privacy: On the Critique of the Liberal Tradition

19

(24)

1 Head or heart: contradictions in the liberal concept of privacy

19

(4)

2 The feminist critique

23

(4)

3 Three classics of liberal thought: Locke, Mill and Rawls

27

(7)

4 Equality and difference between the sexes

34

(6)

Parenthesis: On the debate over equality and difference

34

(6)

5 Equal freedom, equal privacy

40

(3)

3 Freedom, Privacy and Autonomy

43

(36)

1 Introduction

43

(1)

2 A general concept of freedom

44

(5)

3 Freedom and autonomy

49

(17)

Parenthesis: On the concept of authenticity

56

(10)

4 Why do we value privacy?

66

(5)

5 Privacy and autonomy

71

(8)

THE THREE DIMENSIONS OF PRIVACY

4 Decisional Privacy: Scope for Action and Decisions

79

(32)

1 Private matters and freedom for decisions

79

(19)

Parenthesis: Abortion and the right to decisional privacy (Roe v. Wade)

93

(5)

2 Decisional privacy and autonomy (1): the communitarian critique

98

(4)

3 Decisional privacy and autonomy (2): the feminist critique

102

(4)

4 What sort of freedom is protected by privacy?

106

(5)

5 Informational Privacy: Limits to Knowledge

111

(31)

1 Expectations: what do other people know about me?

111

(8)

2 Informational privacy and unspecified others: the panopticon

119

(10)

3 Informational privacy and specified others: collusions, friendships and intimate relations

129

(11)

4 Expectations, knowledge, autonomy

140

(2)

6 Local Privacy: The Private Home

142

(27)

1 The refuge of privacy

142

(2)

2 A room of one's own: self-invention, self-presentation and autonomy

144

(10)

3 Privacy and the family: love and justice

154

(15)

7 Interfaces: Public and Private

169

(24)

1 Interfaces and ambivalences

169

(1)

2 Exposure: the staging of privacy in the public realm

170

(9)

3 Concealment: the protection of the public realm from private matters

179

(6)

4 The private and the public person: dissonant identities

185

(8)

Notes

193

(53)

References

246

(22)

Index

268

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