What’s Beyond the Social Value of Privacy?

In 'Beyond the Social Value of Privacy' 1 Elisabeth Ventham states that privacy helps us not only to maintain social relationships, but is also important as it contributes to 'self-understanding and self-expressions on one's own terms'.This is innovative, but it also can be said that the author is picking up on a longstanding tradition in privacy debates.After the discussion of this duality I'll make a few critical comments about the author's distinction between individual and social justifications, and I'll express some reservations about the added value of the author's proposal. The Move between Individual and Social Justifications of PrivacyIn the development of privacy justifications, the pendulum swings to and fro.Privacy once started with a strong emphasis on the individual who wants 'to be let alone', as Warren and Brandeis famously stated.This individualistic emphasis was of course connected to the literal meaning of privacy, that refers to the state of being secluded, hidden, or withdrawn from public view and attention.In his seminal work Privacy and Freedom (1967), Alan Westin set the standard with his theoretical underpinning of privacy as the voluntary and temporary withdrawal of a person from the general society, either physically or psychologically: he considered solitude to be the most complete state of privacy that individuals can achieve.Privacy justifications in this tradition often go back to autonomy.The ability to determine for ourselves when, how, and to what extent information about us is communicated to others, and the degree to which others have access to our intimate live 1 Ventham, 2025.