Public and Private

The problem of public and private is often thought to be a boundary problem. ‘Public' and ‘private' are said to denote separate areas of human endeavour—distinct ‘realms', ‘spheres', or ‘spaces'. The task of formulating clear boundaries, however, has proven to be enormously complex. It seems that every attempt at conceptualizing a purely private area of activity runs into a particular kind of difficulty, namely, many of the activities characteristic of the private sphere turn out to be activities toward which no responsible public authority could possibly remain indifferent: abuse within the family, collusion in the business world, criminal conspiracy among friends. It may be, however, that the problem of public and private, conceived as a boundary problem, is thereby misconceived. It would perhaps be better to think of public and private as denoting not primarily—perhaps not at all—separate realms of endeavour but different ways of being in the world, different ‘manners of acting'. To act in a private manner is simply different in character from acting in a public manner. Such a formulation, if pursued with care, would allow us to accept fully the arguments of those who would question the very idea of a private realm, while still permitting us to retain a vigorous and compelling public/private distinction.