ABSTRACT
A key question is how trust emerged from its role in interpersonal conduct into the domain of the political. This is illustrated through a close reading of the uses of trust in Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Edmund Burke and John Stuart Mill. This reveals a surprising variety of uses, and also a development that mirrors historical and institutional change over the more than two centuries spanned by those authors. The basic problem of political trust is different for each of these four philosophers; each shows elements that resemble contemporary uses of trust, as well as some that are antiquated. As a close look at key texts of leading thinkers, this chapter does much of the theoretical ‘heavy lifting’ for this book by observing in detail the genealogy of trust in English political thought.
