Harry Pratter’s Wisdom

From 1950 to 1994 Harry Pratter taught law at Indiana University- Bloomington. One of his favorite sayings (he had many of these) was Maitland’s “[T]aught law is tough law,” a phrase that a forty-four year teaching career entitles you to utter with some frequency. In response to Sartre’s notorious challenge, “Do you have anything to say?” Pratter could certainly answer yes. He took Sartre literally. Pratter preferred to speak—that is to teach, and not to write. The source of Pratter’s strong preference for speech over writing must remain a mystery. The consequence is that a good deal of what he thought and said has not been preserved. That’s a shame because Harry Pratter had something to say that was well worth hearing. The hope is that this essay will be able to convey something of the flavor and tenor of Harry Pratter’s thought

Harry Pratter’s Wisdom

From 1950 to 1994 Harry Pratter taught law at Indiana University- Bloomington. One of his favorite sayings (he had many of these) was Maitland’s “[T]aught law is tough law,” a phrase that a forty-four year teaching career entitles you to utter with some frequency. In response to Sartre’s notorious challenge, “Do you have anything to say?” Pratter could certainly answer yes. He took Sartre literally. Pratter preferred to speak—that is to teach, and not to write. The source of Pratter’s strong preference for speech over writing must remain a mystery. The consequence is that a good deal of what he thought and said has not been preserved. That’s a shame because Harry Pratter had something to say that was well worth hearing. The hope is that this essay will be able to convey something of the flavor and tenor of Harry Pratter’s thought

Library Privacy in Context

The English word private comes from the Latin privatus meaning "withdrawn from public life, deprived of office, peculiar to oneself, or private," and which is itself the past participle otprivare, meaning "to bereave or to deprive." 1 The Greek word idiotes means both "private person" and "ignorant, ill-informed person" and is derived from idios meaning both "private" and "peculiar" and which gives us the English idiot and idiosyncrasy. 2 Hannah Arendt has suggested that a large part of what we consider the private and intimate realm was held by the classical Greeks to be the sphere of mere necessity and material dependence. 3 A citizen of classical Athens had to leave the family and household and enter the public realm the polis in order to achieve freedom and the realization of his human potential. 4 Arendt's view has been criticized recently, but even her critic concedes that life as a member of the polis was primary. "One's existence, one's values, one's fulfillment as a member of the human species was dependent on being a member of the polis." 5 All of this suggests that the classical civilizations had an idea of privacy that is foreign to ours today. They devoted a lot of attention to the question of what constitutes the good life. Yet they assigned a modest role to privacy as a part of life. Certainly consideration of the ancients does not require us to throw over our own understanding of privacy. It should bring us to give some thought to it as a value in modern life.published or submitted for publicatio