Positive Liberty

In which I attempt to resolve an apparent disagreement over the nature of privacy, particularly in Objectivist thought.

Regarding the supposed right to privacy, Sandefur writes,

I have never liked the phrase “right to privacy.” It is redundant. All rights are a right to privacy… The right to liberty, for example, means the right to do as you please while having others leave you alone. The term “right of privacy” is therefore circular. If it’s a right, then it is of necessity private.

He expands a bit on his original posting here.

But Don Watkins–also a self-described Objectivist–declares that the right to privacy is not a proper concept at all. He writes:

The Objectivist theory of rights is not a natural rights theory. Rights are not something man has, nor are they something he creates. They are neither intrinsic nor subjective.

Specifically, rights are moral principles. Moral principles are conceptual identifications of a positive causal relationship between a given course of action and man’s life. Like all moral principles, therefore, they are objective.

So far, so good: We cannot “have” moral principles except in the loose sense where what we really mean is that we respect moral principles. When we demand our rights, we do not demand to receive something; we demand only that others respect a set of objective moral principles–and particularly in our own case.

He continues, I think unproblematically,

Does man have a right to be left alone? Not as such. That is a consequence of his actual rights, a consequence only limited to a specific context: [H]e must be left alone by the government so he is free to think and to act on his thinking.

And now for the difficult part:

Does man have a right to privacy? Obviously not. As Stark pointed out… privacy is a value, not a virtue. What is the means to that value? Property rights.

Here we can see the folly of Jason’s suggestion [first made here], “I suspect that many use the right to privacy as a synonym for [the all-encompassing right to be left alone], which may be an abuse of language, but which seems in no real sense an attack on property.” To declare a right to privacy is to make a right out of a value rather than the pursuit of a value. But this is precisely what the statist does when he declares that the right to pursue life, liberty, and happiness is a guarantee he will achieve life, liberty, and happiness – at the expense of his fellow citizens if need be.

To safeguard man’s rights we need to safeguard the integrity of the principle of rights. And to do that, we must fight any attempt to pervert the language of rights with such nonsense as “the right to privacy.”

I suspect that a good deal of this is merely a confusion over terms. For instance, Sandefur’s original statement–All rights are a right to privacy–should really be understood to mean, “All rights are a right to pursue privacy, free from interference by other individuals. Limitations on our government, crafted so that it will respect our rights, are in the same sense guarantees that our private pursuits will not be interrupted by it.”

Even while it is a bit wordy, I prefer the quoted formula. But does this stretch Sandefur’s statement past the bounds of legitimate interpretation? I await the resolution of this (apparent) contradiction.

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