situations when trust is unsought, unrecognised or unwanted. A discussion of this
particular and important set of issues for trust is beyond the scope of the present work.
Here we are concerned with the willingness to trust and its relationship with trusting
wisely.
A willingness to trust in the right measure is what Baier refers to as appropriate trust.
Appropriate trust requires the use of discretion in the attempt to determine whether or
not someone has a good will towards us. It is our assessment of others’ good will
towards us that enables us to distinguish between each of the ideas of hope, faith,
confidence, belief and reliance on the one hand and trust on the other. The essential
point here is that the degree of trust any one individual may allow is dependent upon
both the importance that individual places upon the trust required for a particular given
situation and the individual’s assessment of the other’s good will toward one. This is to
recognise that trust is relative to an individual and has limits determined by particular
situations. Thus one may trust, for example, another to do a particular thing, or to act in
a particular way; or one may merely trust another to a (lesser or greater) extent in some
respects but not in others. In some cases one may merely trust another period, although I
take this to be a rare phenomenon indeed.
A conception of trust
Baier’s emphasis on good will as the defining component of trust is central to the
conception of trust accepted for the purposes of this thesis. As such we can say that we
trust when we believe that those in whom we place our trust have a good will towards
us.
This requirement for belief might be construed as requiring the capacity of independent
practical reasoning as discussed in Chapter 3 and under normal circumstances this
would be a reasonable requirement. However, as already noted, it is with the flourishing
of more-than-ordinarily vulnerable persons, many of whom will have a reduced
capacity for independent practical reasoning, that this thesis is primarily concerned and
one might be forgiven for assuming that such persons are therefore unable to trust as
such. But rather that being a defining attribute of trust, the requirement for belief is
relative and contingent insofar as it is a necessary component only as far as it is possible
for any given individual to exhibit. Thus for some it will be a matter of a general trust in
2Iam grateful to Patricia White for this (real life) example.
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