ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to illustrate how a selection of canonical privacy theorists can be situated within modern liberal political theory, drawing from either Locke, Kant or Mill. It starts with Thomson and then compares her work with Charles Fried, who is viewed as her opponent in that he argues that privacy is irreducible to other moral rights. Both Thomson and Fried view privacy as akin to property, with human beings as owners of their abilities. This is a position that owes a debt to John Locke. The chapter considers how privacy could be understood if the central figure of the enlightenment had not been Locke but the more radical Spinoza who conceptualised a different and better view of individuality. Finally the chapter turns from Bloustein's arguments to consider the role of uninhibited expressions of individuality as the basis for the need to respect privacy through the work of two contemporary writers: Julie Cohen and Alex Pentland.
