Why does accessing a private member of an outer class using reflection raise an IllegalAccessException?

Question

Given the code example below, why is accessUsingReflection→ theAnswer.get( outer )throwing out IllegalAccessExceptionwhile accessDirectlytyping 42 is just fine?

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.IllegalAccessException: Class Outer$Inner can not access a member of class Outer with modifiers "private"

According to this SO answer , I expect it to work, since the access is really "(...) from the class that is allowed to access it."

import java.lang.reflect.Field;

public class Outer
{
   private int theAnswer = 42;

   public static class Inner
   {
      public void accessDirectly( Outer outer )
      {
         System.out.println( outer.theAnswer );
      }

      public void accessUsingReflection( Outer outer ) throws NoSuchFieldException,
                                                      SecurityException,
                                                      IllegalArgumentException,
                                                      IllegalAccessException
      {
         Field theAnswer = Outer.class.getDeclaredField( "theAnswer" );
         // Of course, uncommenting the next line will make the access using reflection work.
         // field.setAccessible( true );
         System.out.println( theAnswer.get( outer ) );
      }
   }

   public static void main( String[] args ) throws NoSuchFieldException,
                                           SecurityException,
                                           IllegalArgumentException,
                                           IllegalAccessException
   {
      Outer outer = new Outer();
      Inner inner = new Inner();
      inner.accessDirectly( outer );
      inner.accessUsingReflection( outer );
   }
}

Answer 1

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Answer 2

public static void main( String[] args ) private int theAnswer = 42 , - accessDirectly 42 ( ), , object Class Class Outer, private int theAnswer = 42 ( ). java.lang.IllegalAccessException , field.setAccessible( true ).

example , public static class Inner.