Whatever Is Done in Secret: A Christian Moral Analysis of a Right to Privacy for a Digital Age

Abstract

In this project, the right to privacy is argued to be an inherent aspect of being human, flowing from humanity’s being created in the imago Dei and the corresponding nature of human rights and duties. Chapter 1 situates this project in the larger landscape of the human rights discussion within the Christian moral tradition and outlines the project, including the intricate relationship of ethics to theology and philosophy. Chapter 2 is a critical survey of the nature of privacy in moral discourse and the various paradigms often employed to navigate the pressing privacy challenges of our day. Chapter 3 focuses on the various philosophical underpinnings and approaches to human rights and privacy. This chapter examines the modern philosophical frameworks for privacy as well as shows how the natural law tradition undergirds and helps to better define this moral good. Chapter 4 focuses on a biblical and theological framework for human dignity and rights grounded in a holistic status-based approach to the imago Dei and draws upon the biblical notion of human individuality and community as seen in key biblical texts. Chapter 5 brings together the various theological and philosophical threads, including the aspects of the interiority and privacy of individuals in community, applying them to a paradigm of privacy as dependency before applying this framework to informational capitalism and charting a path for future privacy studies in Christian ethics.