Katherine Hawley: How to be Trustworthy
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Katherine Hawley: How to be Trustworthy Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Hardback (ISBN 9780198843900) 28.7€. 176 pages J. Y. Lee 1 Accepted: 12 May 2020/ # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
In ‘How to be Trustworthy’, Katherine Hawley argues that trustworthiness requires avoiding unfulfilled commitment. The book covers many relevant topics, including: how trust might be distinguished from mere reliance, under what circumstances trust and distrust become appropriate, what trustworthiness involves, the individual and environmental obstacles that persons face in their pursuit of trustworthiness, and the costs associated with trustworthiness. Her original and comprehensive philosophical contribution on trust and trustworthiness is neatly and clearly outlined in six chapters. At the end of each chapter, she provides readers with a helpful ‘Additional Sources’ section, which signposts further readings and resources to those keen to learn more about the background literature on the topic. Hawley begins the book with an overview and analysis of trust concepts that feature in the book – trust, distrust, trustworthiness, and untrustworthiness. She notes, for instance, that trust and distrust can be best distinguished from mere reliance and non-reliance by reference to the attitudes and expectations it would be normatively appropriate for us to hold in the former case that would be inappropriate in the latter. When our trust is let down, for instance, we feel betrayed, and rightly so. When our mere reliance is let down – as would be the case when our coffee machines break unexpectedly – we can only be disappointed (and perhaps frustrated). To judge when it is appropriate for us to trust, distrust, or even suspend our trust-related judgments, we need a story that can capture the appropriateness of the distinctive normative responses that arise when it comes to trust-related matters. We could espouse a motives-based approach, which focuses on whether the individual to be trusted has the right sort of motives. However, Hawley resists the motives-based approach, convincingly claiming that we can tell a richer and more expansive story with a commitment-based approach to trust and trustworthiness. In order to be trustworthy, she says, one must live up to one’s commitments; correspondingly, attitudes of trust will involve “expectations of commitment-fulfilment” (Hawley 2019, 23). Contra the motives-based view, her view does not impute specific motives that it will take for someone to be trustworthy.
* J. Y. Lee [email protected]
1
University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
J. Y. Lee
Hawley goes on to explain that there are two paradigmatic ways we can incur commitments central to trust – by promising and by telling (or asserting, as she prefers to call it). She dedicates two of her chapters (‘Promising’ and ‘Telling’) to these commitment-generating mechanisms. When it comes to promising, it is not only the sincere and morally permissible promises that are relevant for trust; good promises are ones that we are also com
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