Privacy itself is suspect as a value. It makes deception possible and provides the context for concealing things about which we may feel ashamed or guilty. Embarrassed by this feature, defenders of privacy often argue that privacy is a necessary response to a social and political world that is insufficiently understanding, benevolent, respecting, trustworthy, or caring. I shall call this rationale for privacy “reactive.” This response assumes that we would no longer care who knows the most intimate facts about ourselves were the world morally improved. Some have even suggested that, divorced from its prudential motivation, a proclivity for privacy should be seen as an attitude that impedes the realization of a sense of community and at the same time makes the individual more vulnerable to selective disclosures on the part of others. [If everything about a person is already known by others, that person need not fear revelations. If he (or she) discovers that others are more like him than he first suspected, he is less subject to the intimidations engendered by a sense of comparative inferiority.]

Philosophers and legal theorists have discussed privacy as valuable independent of its effectiveness in protecting persons from a morally harsh world. Charles Fried, Robert Gerstein, James Rachels, and Richard Wasserstrom, have elaborated the ways in which the intimate qualities of some interpersonal relationships would not be possible outside the context of privacy.