Next SectionWestern Heritage and The Right to Privacy
The evolution of a right to privacy parallels the development of the humanist tradition. A right of privacy is predicated on the belief that each human being has intrinsic value, that is, is valuable in and of him or herself Respect for this belief becomes the fundamental source of all human rights. The Renaissance came to call the concept the "dignity of man"; but, it emerged at least as early as ancient Greece - it is evident in Homer -- and is expressed in the middle ages writings of Thomas Aquinas. In passages of The Summa Theologica Aquinas struggles to define the concept of a person and, in a religious context, attempts to distinguish between the sphere of the private individual and that of the collective. (Aquinas, 1952, I, 29, Al-A4)"
. . . the particular and the individual are found in rational substances which have dominion over their own actions, and which are not only made to act, like others, but which can act of themselves; for actions belong to singulars." (p. 162)
Humanism reached its greatest flowering during the Enlightenment and is in the works of such a diverse set of thinkers as Voltaire, Montesqueiu, Diderot, Hobbes, Rousseau, Gibbon, Bentham, Hume, Adam Smith, John Locke, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Emanual Kant. Different as they are from one another, each of these figures, in his own way, exposited a common theme: human beings uniquely possess an ability to create and to communicate. Consequently, society must value each human being for this unique endowment.
From this we can conclude that invading one's privacy detracts from his or her humanity since it ultimately reduces his or her ability to freely communicate and create. A person who cannot communicate or create cannot be a good citizen.
One additional message of the Enlightenment was that members of a society need not, indeed must not, give up all of their natural rights in the process of forming a community. Some degree of individual freedom is essential. As Thomas Jefferson expressed it, there still remain the "unalienable" rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Emanual Kant put it most eloquently when, in the Critique of Practical Reason, he asserted, in effect, that those in power should "act so as to treat human beings always as ends and never merely as means."
To treat human beings, as an "ends withal" requires a recognition that they have individual purposes, just as each of us do. These purposes are of two types (1) goals or desires, and (2) choices. To treat people as a means only is to enslave them or to dominate them by taking away some of their power for deciding for themselves. In the process their personal desires are suppressed; their goals are set for them; their choices are made without consultation. These are less communicative and creative. This was the nature of Stalin's Soviet Society against which Solzhenitsyn rebelled.
To treat people as ends, on the other hand, is effectively to make their ends your own. It is to act toward their purposes as you naturally would toward your own purposes. Ultimately, it is to act so as to help other people secure their purposes. This fundamental notion of freedom underlies each individual's claim to a right to privacy. It also underlies the social rights and duties of each of the four parties.