by Tom Bailey
Philosophy Tutor at the University of Warwick and the Open University

Trust is as elusive in philosophy as it can be in practice. Philosophers often simply ignore or presuppose it, and when they do consider it, they often struggle to explain it or confuse it with other things. Nonetheless, by considering some major philosophers’ thoughts on trust and related matters, we can reveal certain important features of it, and see why it might be so elusive, in both philosophy and practice.

The ring of invisibility

In The Republic, Plato recounts a dialogue between Socrates and Glaucon, Plato’s older brother. In it, Glaucon argues that only the fear of detection and punishment prevents a human being from breaking the law and doing evil for the sake of his own self-interest. Glaucon thinks that this natural fact is demonstrated by the shepherd Gyges, who found a gold ring which made him invisible whenever he twisted it on his finger. (According to the story, he found the ring on a corpse in a hollow bronze horse, which was revealed when an earthquake opened up the ground beneath his flock.) On realising the ring’s power, Gyges used it to seduce the queen, murder the king, and take the throne. Glaucon’s claim then, is that every one of us, however law-abiding and good we might seem, would do as Gyges did, or something else in our self-interest, if we could avoid detection and punishment. And, Glaucon claims, we would be right to do so, since each human being’s only interest is their own self-interest, and we have no interest in justice and morality for their own sakes.

This sorry picture of human nature has been accepted by many philosophers since Glaucon, and, indeed, by many other people as well. It raises the following crucial question: when and why should we trust others, if we think that only the fear of detection and punishment prevents them from harming and stealing from us? Glaucon’s answer is that we should trust others only if we are confident that they fear detection and punishment sufficiently to dissuade them from harming or stealing from us. Thus I should trust the doctor to prescribe me appropriate treatment - and not, for example, make me the unknowing guinea pig for a new, untested medicine - only if I think that she is sufficiently afraid of being found out and struck off if she does not.

This seems reasonable, and reveals an important feature of trust: when we trust others, we are confidently relying on them to take care of something which we care about, but which they could harm or steal if they wished. When we trust then, we make ourselves vulnerable. But we do so in the confidence that the trusted will not exploit this vulnerability, and generally in the confidence that the trusted will actively take care of what we make vulnerable. This vulnerability and care can concern something tangible, such as when I trust my friend with my bike, or something less tangible, such as when I trust a stranger to be honest when I ask him the time.

But Glaucon’s answer to the question of trust also has a truly disturbing implication. This is that, if I am not confident that others are sufficiently afraid of detection and punishment, I should expect them to try to harm or steal from me for their own self-interest. I should therefore be prepared to defend myself and indeed, to pre-empt their attacks with attacks of my own. Thus if I think that the doctor is so set on using me as a guinea pig that she is prepared to risk detection and punishment, I should consider self-defence classes, a stronger lock on my door, and the price of hit men. She, on the other hand, should expect me to consider such things, and so should take measures of her own to resist and overcome them. We are likely to quickly reach a dangerous, even catastrophic, state of mutual distrust. Glaucon’s argument thus seems a recipe for disaster.

Glaucon, however, is confident that detection and punishment in Athens are sufficient to dissuade his fellow Athenians from crime, and he does not consider the disturbing implication of his argument. This implication was brought home forcefully to Niccolò Machiavelli, however. He had been second Chancellor of the Florentine republic, but when the Medici family took power through a coup d’etat, they accused him of plotting against them and subjected him to an excruciating torture called the ‘strappado’ (the ‘torn’). Recovering outside the city, he wrote The Prince, a book of advice for new authoritarian rulers such as the Medici. (He even proposed to send them a copy, in the hope of being offered a job.) In it, he writes, ‘One can make this generalisation about men: they are ungrateful, fickle, liars, and deceivers, they shun danger and are greedy for profit; while you treat them well, they are yours…but when you are in danger they turn away’. Machiavelli concludes from this not just that the Medici should be careful whom they trust. Rather, Machiavelli proposes that they take the brutal Cesare Borgia as their example and be prepared to be cruel, murderous, dishonourable, deceptive, and miserly whenever necessary to maintain their power. ‘I draw up an original set of rules’, Machiavelli writes nonchalantly.

Glaucon’s sorry picture of human nature seems to leave us in a sorry state. If we accept that human beings’ only reason not to harm or steal from each other in the pursuit of their self-interest is fear of detection and punishment, then it follows that when I am not confident that others have enough such fear, I should be prepared to pre-empt their attacks with attacks of my own. Since they also know that I will be prepared to do this, they should take measures to resist and overcome my attacks, and our distrust and attacks will spiral, ending only with the victory of the most brutal and cunning.

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