Private and public

the long version

In this arresting and innovative book, Gobetti combines political theory with the history of political thought to question the conceptual conventions and tacit assumptions which surround the concepts of private and public. In seeking the foundations of the modern liberal conception of private and public, she traces it to modern Natural Law thinkers, in particular Locke and Hutcheson. By developing a revised interpretation of seventeenth-century natural jurisprudence, which recognizes that every adult controls an individual or private domain, as well as engaging in political, community or public interaction, Gobetti raises interesting questions about the politics of participation in modern society.