A Democratic conception of privacy

Annabelle Lever (1)

1 Sciences Po - Sciences Po

This book is based on my doctoral thesis. Although it is usual to publish one’s thesis first, it was only after publishing On Privacy for Routledge that I also decided to publish my thesis. I have published many academic articles on privacy since 1997, but there are still aspects of my original research on privacy which strike me as novel and which I hope may be helpful to others interested in the philosophy of privacy, although I have left the original references and bibliography as they are. For example, the thesis contains an extended comparison of the personal and political aspects of our interests in privacy and their role in identifying privacy as a distinctive value and justifying it as a distinctive legal right. Although the comparison between our personal and political interests in privacy can be found in my later work, the thesis provides a more sustained discussion of these different aspects of privacy, and of their relationship and importance for a distinctively democratic interpretation of privacy. Likewise, my thesis contains a chapter dedicated to the relationship between women’s claims to privacy and their interests in abortion as well as childbearing. It also contains a discussion of women’s personal and political interests in abortion and of their importance for a democratic commitment to the equality of men and women. While my subsequent publications on privacy extend and deepen ideas which can be found here – relating them to debates over freedom of the press, private property or neuroscience, for instance – there are aspects of my original research which I have not had the opportunity to revisit but which, I hope, may still be of interest to others.

Mots clés: Democratic Conception; Privacy; Doctoral thesis

Domaines: Sciences de l'Homme et Société

Annabelle Lever. A Democratic conception of privacy. Author House, 2014, 9781491878385. ⟨hal-02506424⟩