Overview

This interdisciplinary collection responds to intellectual debates concerning the value and limits of privacy. Ever since the beginning of modernity, the line of demarcation between private and public spaces, and the distinction between them, have continually been challenged and redrawn. Such developments as new technologies that introduce previously unforeseen possibilities for infringement upon privacy and the modern spectacles of television talk shows and ""reality-TV"" give added urgency to the discussion on privacy. This collection examines the fundamental issues structuring the debate. Bringing together for the first time leading contributors to the recent debates on privacy from both Europe and the United States, this collection affirms that privacy, in all its dimensions, remains a central value of liberal democracies. These essays expose the complex ways in which privacy is essentially and intimately intertwined with our ideas of freedom, identity and ""the good life"".

Full Product Details

9780804745642

Table of Contents

Reviews

This diverse and wide-ranging collection, edited by Beate Rossler, interrogates the notion of privacy from various perspectives--e.g., law, feminist theory and literary theory--while drawing simultaneously on the intellectual traditions of Habermas, Foucault, Hegel and Kant, among others. --The Law and Politics Book Review

This collection offers an original and highly stimulating set of essays on the topic of privacy by scholars well-known in their respective fields. Its most remarkable feature is the way in which it spans the diversity of philosophical perspectives, including conceptual-analytic, phenomenological, critical theoretic, and postmodern. The volume underscores well both the complex conceptual issues connected to the topic of privacy and the quite diverse range of perspectives that are currently competing to better understand it.

Author Information

Beate Rössler is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam. She is the author most recently of Der Wert des Privaten (2001).

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