Faith in Other People: Three Views

FAITH IN OTHER PEOPLE: THREE VIEWS THE " CREDIBILITY GAP" which was once considered the affiiction of a political administration has now become a general feature of our society. Economic and ethnic groups now meet one another in principle with skepticism. A deep-seated mistrust governs relationships among nations and between individuals. In view of this, the question concerning the conditions necessary for people to trust each other seems to be an urgent one. The problem seems acute enough to warrant an essay which has as its concern precisely the question of what it means to have faith in another person, and this article will endeavor to explore this issue by analyzing and evaluating three contrasting notions of what is involved in believing other people. The division of the essay is threefold : Part One will consider the contribution of the empiricism of David Hume, while the emphasis on reason of some scholastic writers will provide the framework for discussion in Part Two. Lastly, Part Three will propose the personalist approach of the nineteenth-century neo-scholastic thinker Matthias Joseph Scheeben. I DAviD HuME Perhaps the most influential philosopher in the Englishspeaking world at the present time is still David Hume. Certainly, the general principles which he laid down concerning human knowledge are in many ways the outstanding expression of the empirical outlook which has in general characterized the Anglo-Saxon mentality, and these principles also form the foundations of the analytic philosophy which prevails in much of the English-speaking world. For Hume, a wise man will proportion his expectation of 438 FAITH IN OTHER PEOPLE: THREE VIEWS 439 future events in general to the degree o£ regularity with which he has experienced them in the past. For example, I have had a certain experience o£ this particular individual, and I have found that his statements proved perhaps rarely true, or perhaps frequently so, or perhaps almost always so. I£ I am sensible, I will proportion my confidence in his future statements to my past experience o£ his reliability. Were a man, whom I know to be honest and opulent, and with whom I live in intimate friendship, to come into my house, where I am surrounded by my servants, I rest assured that he is not to stab me before he leave it in order to rob me of my silver standish.But he may have been seized with a sudden and unknown frenzy.So may a sudden earthquake arise, and shake and tumble my house about my ears.1 The more extensive my experience of a person, the better position I am in to know how to expect him to act. H I know him very well, not even the irregularities in his manner of acting will surprise me. The most irregular and unexpected resolutions of men may frequently be accounted for by those who know every particular circumstance of their character and situation. A person of obliging disposition gives a peevish answer: but he has the toothache, or has not dined. A stupid fellow discovers an uncommon alacrity in his carriage: but he has met with a sudden piece of good fortune. Or even when an action, as sometimes happens, cannot be particularly accounted for, either by the person himself or by others, we know, in general, that the characters of men are, to a certain degree, inconstant and irregular. This is, in a manner, the constant character of human nature; though it be applicable, in a more particular manner, to some persons who have no fixed rule for their conduct, but proceed in a continued course of caprice and inconstancy. However, for me to form a judgment as to a person's reliability , it is not essential that I have had personal experience of him. There is, in general, a great uniformity among the actions of men, in all nations and ages. . . . The same motives always produce the same 1 Enquiry, Section 8, Part I, source of the subsequent passages cited. 440 PATRICK BURKE actions: the same events follow from the same causes. Ambition , avarice, self-love, vanity, friendship, generosity, public spirit: these passions, mixed in various degrees, and distributed through society, have been, from the beginning...