Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-mwx4w Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-24T04:47:16.566Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

13 - Privacy, intimacy, and personhood

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 December 2009

Get access

Summary

The Summer 1975 issue of Philosophy & Public Affairs featured three articles on privacy, one by Judith Jarvis Thomson, one by Thomas Scanlon in response to Thomson, and one by James Rachels in response to them both. Thomson starts from the observation that “the most striking thing about the right to privacy is that nobody seems to have any very clear idea what it is” (p. 295) and goes on to argue that nobody should have one—a very clear idea, that is. Her argument is essentially that all the various protections to which we feel the right to privacy entitles us are already included under other rights, such as “the cluster of rights which the right over the person consists in and also … the cluster of rights which owning property consists in” (p. 306). After a romp through some exquisitely fanciful examples, she poses and answers some questions about some of the kinds of “invasions” we would likely think of as violations of the right to privacy:

Someone looks at your pornographic picture in your wall-safe? He violates your right that your belongings not be looked at, and you have that right because you have ownership rights—and it is because you have them that what he does is wrong. Someone uses an X-ray device to look at you through the walls of your house? […]

Type
Chapter
Information
Philosophical Dimensions of Privacy
An Anthology
, pp. 300 - 316
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1984

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×