Introduction

Imagine a world without trust. We would never enter a taxi without trusting the driver’s intention and the car’s ability to bring us to our desired destination. We would never pay a bill without trusting the biller and the whole social and institutional structures that have evolved around the concept of money. We would never take a prescribed drug without any trust in the judgment of our doctor, the companies producing the drug, and all the systems of care and control that characterize our healthcare system. We would not know when and where we were born if we would distrust the testimony of our parents or the authenticity of the official records. We may even still believe that the sun rotates around the earth without trust in experts and experiments providing counter-intuitive results. Trust appears essential and unavoidable for our private and social lives, and for our pursuit of knowledge. Given the pervasiveness of trust, it may come as a surprise that trust has only rather recently started to receive considerable attention in Western philosophy. ¹