Privacy

Does Alasair MacIntyre discuss the origin of the notion of [modern?] "privacy" in After Virtue? I think he does, but I will have to check. Who else talks about the division of public and private and how this came about? There is some discussion of the two realms in this post on Henry James' The Bostonians over at The Thinking Housewife: The Anti-Feminist Prophecies of Henry James. Is the division between private and public better explained by the division between domestic and communal? (And even the domestic may have its own divisions - that which pertains to the whole family, that which pertains to relations between husband and wife, that which pertains to the father, that which pertains to the mother, etc.).

And then there is the communal, which can be divided into the men's network and the women's network. Both involve cooperation of its members for the support and betterment of families, mutual support, and friendship. But the men's network also involves political action (and rule/self-governance), which the women's network does not given that men are the head of families, not women. So while there may be some similarities between the two networks, there are profound differences rooted in sex differences. The men's network is more open not only to the immediate help of their families, but for the communal good, since only men, as head of families, can properly adjudicate their responsibilities to one another as members of a whole.

We can also work an analysis of guilds and other associations based on trade/vocation into such an analysis, but this should be a beginning for recovering a better understanding of politics and community life.

Related:
Something by Thomas F. Bertonneau on the novel.