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On the Individual, Social, and Political Value of Privacy

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Privatsphäre 4.0

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Abstract

One of the most influential views in privacy scholarship is that privacy protects individual autonomy: the exercise of autonomy requires detachment from social and political life and privacy facilitates it. This view of privacy presupposes a tension between privacy and society and is responsible for the underrating of privacy in legal and political practice. I argue that we should understand autonomy as politically embedded. Revised along these lines, privacy has a political value: when we claim privacy, we do not make a claim to withdraw from political life, but rather make a claim to protect certain forms of political engagement.

This paper draws on Mokrosinska (2018).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Privacy has also been associated with other individual interests: dignity, material well-being, reputation, self-development, bodily integrity, capacity to pursue intimate relations. For an overview cf. Solove (2008).

  2. 2.

    Communitarians endorse this line of critique when they argue that privacy allows escaping the obligations of social life (Etzioni 1999).

  3. 3.

    See, for example, Kymlicka (1989) for a redefinition of autonomy in response to such challenges.

  4. 4.

    See, for example, Schoeman (1992); Regan (1995); Allen (1999); Roessler (2005); Steeves (2009); Cohen (2013); Roessler and Mokrosinska (2013).

  5. 5.

    Liberals qualify this claim in various ways. For example, Rawls allows “comprehensive doctrines”, i.e. religious convictions, worldviews, fundamental ethical beliefs etc., about which citizens disagree to enter the political domain provided that, in due course, the policies they support are backed up by proper public reasons (Rawls 1997, 783–787). Audi, who focuses on religious beliefs, allows religious appeals if they are backed up by sufficiently motivating, generally acceptable reasons which he identifies with secular reasons (Audi 2000, 75–78).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Leiden, Netherlands

    Dorota Mokrosinska

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  1. Dorota Mokrosinska
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Correspondence to Dorota Mokrosinska .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institut für Philosophie, Universität Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany

    Hauke Behrendt

  2. Internationales Zentrum für Ethik in den Wissenschaften, Eberhard Karls Universität, Tübingen, Germany

    Wulf Loh

  3. Institut für Medienwissenschaften, Universität Paderborn, Paderborn, Germany

    Tobias Matzner

  4. Philosophisches Seminar, Georg-August-Universität, Göttingen, Germany

    Catrin Misselhorn

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Mokrosinska, D. (2019). On the Individual, Social, and Political Value of Privacy. In: Behrendt, H., Loh, W., Matzner, T., Misselhorn, C. (eds) Privatsphäre 4.0. J.B. Metzler, Stuttgart. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-04860-8_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-04860-8_7

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