ABSTRACT
Blow Up, the film by Michelangelo Antonioni, ends with a puzzling, dreamlike scene. The final scene in the film can be interpreted aesthetically, as an invitation to build upon that attitude of as-if, that attitude of fictionality which colours every course of action very slightly, and to crystallise it into a corresponding manner of living. What people actually have is an invitation to trust. Trust is a resource that is as fundamental as it is precarious. It is fundamental socially, especially in a moral, political, economic or psychological sense, but also in an ontological or existential sense. The phenomenon of political terrorism, a phenomenon generating anxiety and thus the complete opposite of trust, encourages the establishment of a prevention state which principally views its citizens as suspicious objects in need of surveillance. The connection between the ontological-existential and epistemological interpretations of trust is obvious.
