Abstract
This chapter introduces the themes of the book as centred on the right to privacy and contiguous rights in the years encompassing and disrupted by the two world wars of the first half of the twentieth century. It argues that, with many of the most interesting modern thinkers of the period dead or marginalised (or both) by 1948, their ideas about how rights such as privacy should develop to accommodate the exigencies of modern life failed to find much of a voice in the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Yet it points out that they anticipated in surprising ways some of our ‘new’ ways of thinking about these rights in more recent times.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Santayana (1905), p 284.
- 2.
Warren and Brandeis (1890).
- 3.
Shelley (1821) in Wu (2012), p. 1247.
- 4.
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), Preamble, first and second recitals.
- 5.
Cf Morsink (2021), pp. 81–5. And see generally the Travaux Préparatoires in Schabas (2013).
- 6.
Moyn (2010), pp. 47–48.
- 7.
Arendt (1949), p 34.
- 8.
Simmel (1903), p 324.
- 9.
Arendt (1949), pp. 32–33.
- 10.
Ibid, pp. 26, 28.
- 11.
- 12.
Weber (1920).
- 13.
Kafka (1922).
- 14.
Census Act Case, 65 BVerfGE 1 (1983).
- 15.
German Basic Law (1949), arts 1 and 2.
- 16.
Foucault (1976).
- 17.
Bergson (1907).
- 18.
Herring (2019).
- 19.
Chaplin (1936).
- 20.
Arendt (1949), p. 34.
References
Arendt H (1949) ‘The rights of man’: what are they? Mod Rev 3(1):24–36
Bannerman S (2019) Relational privacy and the networked governance of the self. Inf Commun Soc 22(14):2187–2202
Bergson H (1907) L’Évolution créatrice (creative evolution). In: Bergson H (1912) Creative evolution (trans: Mitchell A). Macmillan, London
Chaplin C (1936) Modern times. United Artists, Hollywood
Citron DK (2022) The fight for privacy: protecting dignity, identity and love in the digital age. Norton, New York
Federal Republic of Germany (1949, May 23) Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany
Foucault M (1976) Two lectures. In Foucault M (1980), Power/knowledge: selected interviews and other writings, 1972–1977 (ed Gordon C, trans: Gordon C et al). Harvester, London, pp. 78–108
Herring E (2019, May 6) Henri Bergson, celebrity (ed Warburton N). Aeon. https://aeon.co/essays/henri-bergson-the-philosopher-damned-for-his-female-fans
Kafka F (1922) Das schloß (the castle). In: Kafka (1997) The castle (trans: Underwood J A. from Kafka F (1982) Das schloß, vol 1 (Pasley M herausgegeben). Fischer, Frankfurt am M). Penguin, London
Marwick A, Boyd D (2014) Networked privacy: how teenagers negotiate context in social media. New Media Soc 16(7):1051–1067
Morsink J (2021) Article by article: the universal declaration of human rights for a new generation. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia
Moyn S (2010) The last utopia: human rights in history. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge
Richardson M (2017) The right to privacy: origins and influence of a nineteenth-century idea. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Santayana G (1905) The life of reason, vol 1. Scribner’s, New York
Shelley PB (1821), A defence of poetry. In: Wu D (ed) (2012) Romanticism: an anthology, 4th edn. Blackwell, Oxford, pp 1233–1247
Simmel G (1903) The metropolis and mental life (Die großstädte und das geistesleben). In: Simmel G (1991) On individuality and social forms (ed Levine DN). University of Chicago Press, Chicago, pp 324–339
United Nations General Assembly (1948, December 10) Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Res 217 A(III)
Warren SD, Brandeis LD (1890) The right to privacy. Harv L Rev 4(5):193–220
Weber M (1920) Wirtschaft und gesellschaft (economy and society). In Weber M (2019) Economy and society: a new translation (ed and trans: Tribe K). Harvard University Press, Cambridge
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Richardson, M. (2023). Introduction. In: The Right to Privacy 1914–1948. SpringerBriefs in Law. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-4498-9_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-4498-9_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-99-4500-9
Online ISBN: 978-981-99-4498-9
eBook Packages: Law and CriminologyLaw and Criminology (R0)