Η ιδιωτικότητα του προσώπου μέσα από τη συνθετική αντίθεση δημόσιου-ιδιωτικού

Abstract

In both theory and philosophy of law, the approach of privacy as a right of negative content is exceptionally common. In the analysis of Hannah Arendt, the privacy of οίκος (home) is comprehended as deprivation of communication, of expression as well as of the right to participate in the political realm, the πόλις (the ancient Greek city). In the same line of thinking, the realistic approach of Richard Posner understands privacy as a veil, which enables the individual to withhold her illegal or antisocial activities from public knowledge. The common characteristic amongst these negative approaches of privacy is that they are all founded on a strict, absolute discrimination between public and private. In the following paper a reverse hypothesis will be supported, namely that the public-private distinction is of great importance for a positive and not negative conceptualization of the privacy of the individual. More specifically, as it will be argued, if the public and the private sphere are not comprehended through the logic of their absolute but of their relative distinction, it is possible to restore a positive meaning in the privacy of the individual. This argument is structured through the analysis of the impasses of an absolute public- private distinction. Furthermore, the pursuit of the normative importance of a relative and specific distinction between public and private is realized via the presentation and legal analyses of three particular examples of privacy. Thus the evolution of the home, the family and the human body is analyzed under a normative perspective.