Publicity and Privacy: Two Contemporary Challenges to the Liberal Script

The liberal script has always promised both publicity (as a condition of legitimate government) and privacy (as a right indispensable to autonomous individual self-development). The chapter reconstructs this initially promise and identifies some of the blind spots in the actual history of liberal thought and institutions. It also briefly analyzes a number of structural transformations of the public and the private sphere since the 18th century. It then diagnoses contemporary challenges to the public sphere and to privacy and asks whether these challenges can be met from within the liberal script. In particular, competition and pluralism, individual rights, and transparency are suggested as possible remedies for the problems posed by social media; the limits of these remedies in the face of the novel character of platforms is also acknowledged.