Public Scholars at
Hanover College
Inquiries
Volume Two, Number Two - Winter 2002
Reviving the Reticent Sensibility
We want to know everything. We consider it our "right to know." We believe this right extends not only to the machinations of our government, but to the details of the private lives of our politicians and celebrities. The scope of our "right to know" is being debated afresh in the wake of the events of September 11. The renewed debate runs along two separate but parallel lines. On the one hand, we are questioning anew the tension between our right as citizens to have free and unfettered access to information and our government's need to keep secrets for reasons of national or, as it is now called, "homeland" security; on the other hand, we are also re-examining the need of our government to collect information on its citizens in the name of security, and weighing that need against the right of the individual to privacy.
These two issues will be in the forefront of our national discourse for some time to come, and the Center for Free Inquiry will be examining them from a number of perspectives in the months ahead. However, we are also wondering if it is not time to reconsider another aspect of the concept of privacy - an aspect that has less to do with rights, and more to do with compassion and decency. In this issue of Inquiries, Rochelle Gurstein re-introduces us to the concept of "reticence" by looking at the extraordinary chain of events that comprise the tale of the preparation, publication, and reception of the biography and letters of the famed English historian and social commentator Thomas Carlyle by his friend and biographer James Anthony Froude.
Jeffrey Brautigam
Jeffrey Brautigam is the Director of the Center for Free Inquiry at Hanover College, where he also teaches modern European history and the history of science.