Abstract
I have observed that our lives necessarily involve some dependence on others—forms of dependence for which we cannot, for reasons internal to what is involved in rationality, ask for a rational justification. A certain preparedness to trust others is constitutive of rationality. One might perhaps draw a general conclusion: that a form of basic trust is an elementary aspect of all human life.
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References
Gaita 1991, 314.
Wittgenstein, C&E, 383; emphasis in the original. The passage is discussed in Hertzberg 1988, 317–318.
Hume (1748/1902), Enquiry..., Section VIII, Part I, § 69. Also see Baier 1986, 236; Baker 1987, 8; Luhmann 1979, 88–89: ‘Completely new types of action, above all such as are not immediately satisfying and hence have to be artificially motivated, become possible in a system whichcan activate trust. [...] The satisfying of needs can be delayed, and nevertheless guaranteed. Instrumental action, oriented toward distant effects, can become institutionalized if the temporal horizon of a system is suitably extended by means of trust’. Also see ibid., p. 24.
Baier 1986, 234. Also see Luhmann 1988; Luhmann 1979, 20–21. Luhmann uses ‘trust’ exclusively for cases where one is aware of the fact that one is trusting, preferring ‘confidence’ or ‘familiarity’ for cases where we do not seriously consider alternatives. This, of course, is a technical choice of his own.
Baier 1986, loc. cit., —Baier (1994, 159) also writes: ‘Up to a certain age, sometimes all too young an age, we trust relatives such as uncles not to make what we later learn to call sexual advances’. She also suggests (loc.cit.) that I go to bed trusting that a brain disease has not unexpectedly turned my spouse into a mad aggressor. We shudder at the thought that such things really have happened; however, one should not think that this fact alone makes it meaningful to speak of trust in all cases regardless of the circumstances. Besides, the second example seems problematic. I am not trusting my spouse; rather, I am trusting that she has not succumbed to a disease. The risk implied is not betrayal by her but that of an unexpected calamity befalling her. Also see pp. 176, 197.
Luhmann 1979, 25.
Bok 1978, 26; DuBose 1995, 43.
Code 1987, 377. Also see Govier 1992; Luhmann 1979, 93–94; Baier 1985, 294–295.
A suggestion by David Cockburn.
Turnbull 1972.
A suggestion by David Cockburn.
Garfinkel 1984, 37.
Ibid., 35. Emphasis added.
Ibid., 44.
Ibid., 37. That is, they can supposedly be challenged by doing silly things (Tony Palmer, in discussion).
Giddens 1991, 36; emphasis in the original. Also see Erikson 1977. As to the problematic role of the idea of ‘feelings’ in contexts like this, see my argument in Ch 2.
Giddens 1991, 40. Also see pp. 38–42.
Ibid., 40.
Loc. cit.
Garfinkel 1963. Also see Garfinkel 1984, 42–75.
Garfinkel 1984, 42–44.
Giddens 1991, 36.
Ibid., 37. My emphasis.
Cf. Garfinkel 1984, 75. Also see Chapters 2 and 5 above.
A question raised by David Cockburn.
Giddens 1991, 37 and passim.
Luhmann 1979, 4. Also quoted in Barber 1983, 10.
For a list of references, see Luhmann, op. cit., notes 1 and 2, p. 8. Also see Giddens 1990, 1991; Garfinkel 1963, 1984; Erikson 1977. —Baier (1994, 159) remarks: ‘We take many appearances on trust, and we would go mad if we did not’.
Loc. cit,. —Also see, e.g., p. 19: ‘Since the constitution of meaning and the world is consistently anonymous and latent, the full range of the experiential possibilities which it allows—the extreme complexity of the world—will be excluded from consciousness’.
Ibid., 30.
Hume (1748/1902), Enquiry..., Section IV, Pt. II. —Hume seems aware of the parallel noted here; see, e.g., his essay ‘Of the Original Contract’ (Hume 1904), 456: ‘Obedience or [political] subjection becomes so familiar that most men never make any inquiry about its origin or cause, more than about the principle of gravity, resistance, or the most universal laws of nature’.
Barber 1983, 9.
Hume does not mean that this custom is justified by the uniformity of our experience (op. cit., V:II); but he does think that the uniformity of experience gives rise to the custom.
Goodman 1972.
Disorder can be defined as failure to conform to a specifiable organising scheme. ‘Disorder’ implies that it might be someone’s business to implement order. Lack of order, on the other hand, implies the absence of an organising scheme. A bookshelf seems to be in disorder; but the owner informs us that the books are not meant to be in a particular order. On his authority, we accept that there is no organising scheme. A natural scientist, on the other hand, cannot make a corresponding appeal to an authority.
Also see Bergson 1928, 245–248.
Thus his project can be broadly described as Kantian.
‘Trust’ here, of course, will not have the moral implications discussed in Chapter 5.
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Lagerspetz, O. (1998). The Idea of Basic Trust. In: Trust: The Tacit Demand. Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8986-4_8
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