ABSTRACT
Exploration of how we use the word trust reveals the considerable work which the word is nowadays required to do, from the helplessness of the infant through to the persuasive – even manipulative – rhetoric of presidents and prime ministers. A political philosophy of trust has a history, moreover, and we need to take account of that, observing how trust, in speech and in actions, has been transformed. Trust arose as a concern in the context of the political, replacing other traditional terms, especially friendship and faith, since the Renaissance, and this broadens out into the wide range of registers of trust-talk that we use today. Considering the changing boundaries of relevance of trust, we need now even to ask, ‘Can robots trust?’ A thorough theoretical re-examination of trust also asks, ‘With what kind of question should we commence our inquiry – definitional, ethical, or performative?’ It considers what makes us curious – or even anxious – about trust, such that we need to think, talk and theorize about it.
