The Value of Privacy Beyond Autonomy – Tobias Matzner

Abstract || Traditionally privacy is valued for protecting individual freedom and autonomy. Such concepts of privacy and the underlying idea of autonomy have drawn criticism from various quarters. Feminist thinkers and critical theorists have advanced such criticism on normative grounds. In the recent years, they have been joined by arguments on a pragmatic level, which show that such concepts of privacy no longer can orient life in a world permeated with new threats to privacy, in particular due to the development of information technology. In consequence, many theories have reconstructed concepts privacy in light of this criticism, often by invoking more relational concepts of autonomy.  The talk proposes a different approach. Using a more socially situated concept of the subject, which is derived from Hannah Arendt’s thought, it shows that privacy plays a more fundamental value for the constitution of subjectivity, beyond autonomy.

Presented by The New School for Social Research

Tobias Matzner works in political philosophy and philosophy of technology. He is a visiting scholar at the Department of Philosophy at The New School for Social Research, and a member of the International Centre for Ethics in the Sciences and Humanities in Tübingen, Germany.