Esiste davvero la distinzione tra ambito privato e pubblico?

According to a certain expression of liberalism and to a widespread current opinion, there is a clear distinction between the visible-public sphere of life and the private sphere, in which the individual does not affect others. The present contribution examines this thesis and rather asserts – even reporting some passages (little considered by literature) of a tutelary deity of liberalism like Mill – that the individual’s behavior in his private sphere, even when he is alone, can considerably influence his intersubjective and public behavior. It also indicates some expressions of this influence that derive from an over-regulated use of digital technologies. Private conduct, virtues and vices have public consequences, human action has an immanent effect on the subject which then reverberates on other subjects, moreover evil can have an emulative effect. And the private use of digital technologies affects, for example, time (reducing it), thought (sometimes harming it and leading to an impoverished perception of reality), memory (at the expense of the possibility of history being a magister), language (sometimes impoverishing it, to the detriment of one's civil commitment and the common good of democracies), and on the subject's interpersonal relationships (damaging them).