ABSTRACT
This chapter explores together a number of threads of the argument so far concerning the place of private and public life in politics and personal life. Public life is certainly the principal ground of political freedom, but private life also advances it. Without both its links to private life and, at the same time, boundaries between public and private life, public life's impersonality, tendency to conformity, and imperialism are dangerous to freedom and dignity. The relationship of public life to such contributions of private as trust, integrity, autonomy, and political freedom is problematical. The imperialistic aspects of public life also threaten to submerge personal autonomy and the aspects of political freedom particularly nurtured in private. The ultimate limitation of public life is that private life is in some sense prior to it. Religion brings a dynamism to both private and public life, because it is one of the principal inhabitants of the border territory between public and private life.
