Colloqium #17
July 2020
Description
A lot of bandwidth is taken up these days with the question of privacy, but few have thought to question privacy itself. For how long have human beings been private? For how long has privacy even been possible?
Paying special attention to the Roman origins of the word privacy (as well as of Privatschutz and Freiheit in German), the discussion seeks to portray privacy as a development, rather than as a given or attribute, of the human condition.
Speakers
Robert Dudley: Robert Dudley is a Fulbright Graduate Fellow and PhD from Duke University with a dissertation on Cicero’s use and interpretation of Plato in the former’s own philosophical treatise. Like Cicero, Dudley prefers to speak on both sides of an issue and give all counterarguments a fair hearing. He is especially interested in classical antiquity as a counterargument to modernity, not because, by any stretch of the imagination, antiquity is always right, but because classical antiquity can correct our tendency of taking our identity and political situation for normal or inevitable.