ABSTRACT
Privacy, like alienation, loneliness, ostracism, and isolation, is a condition of being-apart-from-others. However, alienation is suffered, loneliness is dreaded, ostracism and isolation are borne with resignation or panic, while privacy is sought after. The case for reducing privacy to some other less desired or actually averted condition is apt to be especially compelling in a social order which grounds self-definition in human relationships and interactions. The case for reducing privacy to some other condition has been argued along two lines. First, privacy may be interpreted as a fall from the primal condition of social communion or personal wholeness. Second, privacy may be interpreted as an anonymity which allows a person to escape from his social responsibilities. Again privacy is evil and its pursuit as a good a rationalization. The most striking aspect of the two arguments for depreciating privacy is the fact that they conceal theoretical interpretations of human nature.
