Being human and trust

Abstract

"Trust" has become the buzzword of our decade, amongst other things, as a reaction to what is perceived as a trust crisis. This perception has a lot to do with a perception of not-being-in-control and a culture of suspicion. This leads to a yearning for a world where total control is possible and nobody thus needs to trust anybody else. We shall argue that this kind of world is conditioned by the earlier modern reductionist idea of a strong and disengaged self. We approach the nature of trust from a transcendental perspective by looking at some of the salient conditions for trust to exist, namely a lessened emphasis on a strong and disengaged self, our human condition of vulnerability and an inescapable engagement with a normative horizon. We shall argue that these conditions are not only the result of philosophical pondering but also insights that impress themselves in recent empirical research on trust.