Trust is an essential component of social life and yet political polarization and social tensions can easily lead to its erosion. The articles collected in this volume throw a new light on the fundamentals of trust and trustworthiness and thus help us understand better the conditions and the limits of trust.
The book brings together some of the best recent thinking on trust from across a broad spectrum of approaches and concerns. The essays range from the more abstract discussions of the conditions and nature of trust, to its application to our social and political lives in general, alongside more subject specific approaches such as trust in the media. Trust is a thick concept with both epistemic and normative content and significance, and several chapters engage with the ethical features of trust in distinct ways and also show the central role of trust in our decision-making. There is also an engagement with the phenomenological approach of Husserl in conjunction with Margaret Gilbert’s theory of political obligation. The final chapter, by Onora O’Neill, one of the pioneers of the discussions of trust and trustworthiness in recent philosophy, links the topic of trust to the central issue of the conditions of trustworthiness.
Given the paramount significance of the exercise of trust in our daily lives, this book will be of interest to philosophers and non-philosophers alike. This book was originally published as a special issue of the International Journal of Philosophical Studies.