Trust: Who or What Might Support Us?

2. Entrusting

33 t w o Entrusting Several authors have analyzed the interpersonal relation that emerges when someone entrusts someone else with a message, a mission, the conservation of some property, an intelligent contribution to a debate, and so on. Before focusing in more detail on the phenomenon of entrusting someone with a certain task, I summarize here a few relevant points that have already been noted in chapter 1. The trusting person trusts that the trusted person is (a) competent and (b) willing to (c) do (accomplish, produce, speak) what the trusting person asks, expects, or hopes to be done, although there is always a certain risk that cannot be eliminated by any calculation or deduction. By trusting someone, I do not supply the missing link for a demonstration of the fact that the trusted one certainly will realize what I trust her to do. With someone whom I trust, I deal differently than I would deal with a person whose behavior I want to study and comprehend (or even calculate) so well that I can predict without fail the result of her doing with regard to the thing or the task I entrust to her. By putting my trust in you (“I trust you”), I situate myself in relation 34 Varieties of Trust and Distrust to you, while stating, deciding, or affirming—at least implicitly— that you, according to me, are trustworthy. Which people are trustworthy ? Persons of whom I have sufficient experience to expect that they will accomplish what I trust them to do, although they might— perhaps, “God forbid”—disappoint my expectation and estimate of its probable fulfillment. It is not necessary that the trusted person know about my trusting her, but it is essential that she not be forced to do what I want her to do; she must do it out of her own responsibility. While turning to you, whom I trust, I ask you to do (be, omit, and so on) what—I trust—you can and, once you accept my request, will do. I delegate a task—either one that I could accomplish on my own or one for which you, rather than I, are competent, but in any case I count on you to perform it in your way, taking your own responsibility for it. In a sense, I leave you alone with that task, which, as yours, is somehow an extension or replacement of my own task. You have become an extension of me and I am with you as long as you are working on the task. By putting my trust in you, I accompany you, even if neither you nor I are constantly aware of it. Parts of your and my life and responsibility coincide by participating differently in one and the same work. My trust in you can be motivated (at least in part) by recommendations I have received, but in the end, it is my estimate and my decision— which involves a certain risk—on which my trust depends. Trusting someone can be a one-sided relation, which does not necessarily trigger an equivalent trust in the trusted person. For example, when I trust that a particular student will become a great scholar, my telling her neither generates automatically her trust in me, nor does it necessarily trigger any self-confidence in the student. My trust in someone can even be answered by contempt, for example when the trustee is not impressed by my discernment or when he has faked his trustworthiness to mislead the trusting one. Many variations are possible and the summary structure sketched above can be applied and modified in relation to trust in things, tools, property, one’s own mental and corporeal capacities, social institutions , language, culture, mores, humanity, the world, the universe, Entrusting 35 being, and God, but one important distinction between trusting and many other human activities must be stressed, because it is often overlooked . To clarify this distinction, I begin with another distinction which I already mentioned in chapter 1: the distinction between speaking to and speaking about. speaking about and speaking to When I speak about something, I place myself at a certain mental distance from that thing, as it is there displayed in front of me. I can also speak about persons, of course, for example by giving information about their function, their qualities, work, successes, and so on. This kind of...