Abstract

The privacy defined and discussed in this book is not the privacy we are said to have a right to as over against the intrusions of our neighbor or the state or some other corporate body. Weiss, as it happens, is also concerned with our rights and in fact devotes the last chapter to them; but he takes the privacy of the book's title to be the source of all human rights, including the right to privacy just mentioned. In that chapter he makes it clear that in his mind any discussion of rights that does not take account of the metaphysical ground he calls privacy will fall short of full rationality. 'Privacy', as used in this book, is therefore a metaphysical term. No reader of Weiss's earlier work will be surprised to learn that this is a book in metaphysics rather than political theory. It contains, however, many concrete applications, and in some respects it is as close to common sense as a work by Aristotle. Though the author occasionally makes use of terms--for instance, 'finalities', 'actualities'--to which he has given a special metaphysical sense in earlier works, he is always careful to define them, so that the book is self-contained and can be read with profit even by those who have no acquaintance with his work.