How To Be Trustworthy

by Katherine Hawley

If someone relies upon a rope bridge to hold their weight, but the bridge is unreliable, the practical consequences might be very serious, even unto death. If someone relies upon Kant’s regular morning walk as a reminder to take their medication, but Kant is unreliable in this respect, this might also lead to the ultimate bad consequence. Relying on the unreliable can be dangerous. But trusting the untrustworthy can generate harms go beyond those caused by relying on the unreliable. One sort of harm is emotional damage caused by discovering that you have trusted someone who turned out not to deserve your trust. This sort of damage can have long-ranging and complex consequences. Important though such harms are, I will set them aside here in order to discuss the kind of distinctive harm done when trust is violated, even if the violation is never discovered and so does not cause emotional damage. It does seem that there is something intrinsically problematic about betrayals or violations of trust, something in addition to both the practical consequences of unreliability and the emotional consequences of discovering such violations: the wrong of lying, cheating, and promise-breaking goes beyond its contingent practical harm. But being trusted is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for the possibility of such betrayal.