Abstract

Contemporary periodical literature on the human right to privacy focuses largely on the methods and standards for the protection of privacy, rather broadly conceived, in the current technological age. Literature of previous decades, however, engaged to a greater degree such theoretical questions as whether we have a right to privacy and, if so, what constitutes the source of that right. I here take up, once again, those earlier questions, arguing that they were never adequately answered due, on the practical side, to a rapid increase in the demand for personal privacy and, on the theoretical side, to the failure of those earlier theorists to ground their views about privacy in a clear delineation of their views about rights in general. ;Hence the thesis begins with the delineation of my theory of the dual ontological structure of natural rights. Our right to privacy is seen to emerge, with our right to autonomy, from a universally understood moral-metaphorical conception of humans as dignified. This conception of moral personhood itself arises from our perception of the innate natural properties of privacy and autonomy, properties which are integral to the thinking mind. The moral, then, is here seen to be a metaphorical representation of non-moral, innate human properties, which representation brings meaning to those properties and to other aspects of human life. The "duality" of the ontology of rights herein depicted arises from the necessity of conceiving human dignity as an innate property of persons in order that the innateness of what gives rise to it should be adequately represented. ;Among the theories of privacy rejected, through defending my theory, are the theory that privacy is a negative form of freedom, the theory that all privacy rights are reducible to other sorts of rights, and the theory that privacy is a luxury claimed only in materially advanced cultures. I defend against the charge that I commit the naturalistic fallacy, as well as defending my notion that natural rights are derivable from a metaphorical, moral conception of personhood. The latter defense clarifies my view of natural rights as being naturally-created while being also societally-bestowed. ;I conclude with an analysis of two current issues in the "privacy trade," pointing the way to understanding the usefulness of my theory to determine entitlement