ABSTRACT
My subject is trust within a state and between individual citizens and how it can be established and maintained, rather than trust in intimate relationships. Political trust is relevant to rebuilding society after civil war, genocide or another calamity has occurred. Philosophers discussing trust take trust to be an implicit confidence that others have good will or lack ill will towards us. 2 This confidence can be made explicit if we reflect on it. Trust can be distinguished from reliability, as that is based on a conscious prediction of the behaviour of others (Thomas 1990: 238; Baier 1995: 98–9). I will argue that trust involves respect in the sense of limiting deception of others and care for others, or at least the conditions that will make truthfulness and care more likely. When we trust we are vulnerable to being harmed by others; however, we tend not to deliberate on such vulnerability.
