A More Humane Human Nature

In desperation, or perhaps irritation, one might respond by suggesting that Glaucon, Machiavelli, and Hobbes have all simply misunderstood human nature. For, one might insist, Gyges is not a good example of human nature, since he manifests nothing of our natural concern for others. David Hume, an Enlightenment philosopher of much more optimistic and genial temperament than Machiavelli and Hobbes, suggests this. He recognises that human beings naturally care for their loved ones and sympathise with others’ feelings, including those of complete strangers. In his Treatise of Human Nature he writes that sympathy makes human beings ‘mirrors’ of each other, and that this give them ‘a remarkable desire of company, which associates them together, without any advantages they can ever propose to reap from their union’. Love and sympathy of this kind would ensure that there would be more trust, and therefore more cooperation and peace, in a state of nature, or between princes, than Hobbes and Machiavelli claim. For example, I may be able to trust the members of my family not to attack me in a state of nature, simply because I know that they love me.

But unfortunately, even among human beings who love and sympathise with others, there is still much scope for distrust and war. Firstly, there is the sad fact that human beings’ care for their loved ones makes them badly disposed to enemies of their loved ones. Think of the Fowlers and the Mitchells in EastEnders, or the Capulets and the Montegues in Romeo and Juliet. Hume rightly accepts this. He also recognises that, although sympathy for others can make us more impartial, neither this nor love necessarily overcomes our more egoistic interests. If Hume had seen Eastenders, he would not have been surprised to see Phil Mitchell having an affair with his brother’s wife, despite the bond between the brothers. In a state of nature, such trumping of love or sympathy by self-interest might be particularly crucial: for example, you might sympathise with my hunger, or even love me, but not enough to give me your food. Finally, note that even a saintly human being, whose sympathy for others provides him with his most important interests, must compete with the less saintly (and, perhaps, other saints with different sympathies) for the things he cares about. This is what makes Superman films (barely) watchable.

However, one might still try to resist the Machiavellian conclusion. One might, for example, put one’s faith in education and civilization to improve and spread our sympathy for others, and thus reduce the likelihood of distrust and war. This is Hume’s hope, and that of many other Enlightenment figures. Many of them, like John Locke, Immanuel Kant and Karl Marx, even go so far as to presuppose a shared sense of morality, which might be cultivated to overcome the partiality of our self-interest, love, and sympathy. (Socrates responds to Glaucon’s argument by making a similar claim.) But if we had sufficient sympathy for others, or really shared a sufficiently strong sense of morality, we would not seem to need to trust each other at all. Even assuming that such improvements are possible, then, putting our faith in them does not give us much guidance for living and trusting in our present, vulnerable condition, in which we must live until such improvements are made.

Alternatively, of course, we might follow Glaucon, Hobbes, and numerous Home Secretaries in turning to detection and punishment to dissuade us from harming and stealing from each other. The possibility of being found out by the police and punished with a prison sentence, for instance, might dissuade some potential wrongdoers from crime. Those particularly afraid of their fellows might even think that a very coercive state is a price worth paying for security. But detection and punishment can be effective only if the vast majority of human beings do not even think of harming or stealing from each other, and if we already have a certain trust in the agencies of detection and punishment themselves. To emphasise detection and punishment therefore seems, at best, to be a very limited solution, and, at worst, to miss the point entirely.

Our last hope of avoiding the Machiavellian conclusion, then, would seem to lie in human irrationality. Like those philosophers who have given up their faith in rationality, we could simply hope that human irrationality will somehow keep our most essential cooperative activities afloat. But this is a largely blind and decidedly risky strategy, and, indeed, seems paradoxical: how can we rationally persuade ourselves to be irrational? This strategy should therefore be attempted only if all else fails.

Rethinking

As at the end of every bad film, however, there is perhaps one last chance to avoid disaster. And it is our natural love and sympathy, and our sense of morality which point us in the right direction. These nobler parts of human nature suggest that when we trust others, we are confidently relying on their good disposition towards us - we are relying on their love or sympathy for us or their sense of morality, for instance, rather than on their egoistic interests, habits, or irrationalities. Thus trust is a special kind of reliance, reliance on others’ good disposition towards us. In contrast, if I expect my friend not to steal my bike just because I have asked him to leave a deposit, then I may be relying on him not to steal it, but I am not trusting him. (Nor is he likely to remain my friend for long!) Similarly, if I rely on others not to attack me in a state of nature just because I believe that it is in their self-interest not to break our agreement and that they are rational enough to recognise this, again I may be relying on them, but I am not trusting them.

This implies that Glaucon, Machiavelli, and Hobbes cannot even conceive of genuine trust, since their picture of human nature does not allow for it, and that we need to move beyond their picture if we are to explain genuine trust. But we also need to recognise that trust cannot rest only on love, sympathy, or the sense of morality. The insufficiency of love and sympathy is particularly clear. For we can rely on others’ love or sympathy without necessarily trusting them as well, and we can trust people who we do not believe to love or sympathise with us at all. I rely on my doting grandma to make me shortbread every time I see her, but it would be odd to think that I trust her to do so. Rather, I just rely on her love for me and for cooking shortbread. We can therefore rely on others’ love or sympathy without necessarily having to trust them as well. (To avoid offending my grandma, I should say that, of course, I do trust her as well.) We can also trust others without believing that they love or sympathise with us at all. I might find out that my grandma really despises me, but I could still trust her to make me shortbread every time I see her. This is particularly clear when we trust in institutions, officials, and professionals. For I need not think that the doctor loves or sympathises with me in order to trust her not to use me as a guinea pig for untested medicines. Even more clearly, it would be absurd to believe that those involved in the testing of medicines are reliable just because they love me or sympathise with patients in general. But I can trust them nonetheless. Indeed, we can say exactly the same thing about their sense of morality, and even their fear of detection and punishment.

Nor do we necessarily trust others just because we know that they have been reliable in the past. I have a great deal of evidence of my grandma’s making me shortbread whenever I see her, but I do not therefore have to trust, or even rely on, her to do so; and I can trust the people who test medicines without having any hard or conclusive evidence about their reliability in doing so. Also, the capacity to forgive those we trust for unreliability, and their capacity to respond when we encourage them to be more reliable, can be crucial to the cultivation and maintenance of trust. When I trust, then, I am not simply making a judgement about the past reliability of the trusted, although of course I may take this into account.

Thoughts like these suggest that there is more to trust than even an extended picture of human nature, such as that offered by Hume, Locke, Kant, or Marx, would allow. For the ‘good disposition’ of the trusted, on which we rely when we trust them, cannot consist only of their past reliability, their fear of detection and punishment, their love or sympathy, or their sense of morality. Trusting others might therefore seem to rest, ultimately, on an irreducible feeling about their good disposition, or even on a ‘leap of faith’, much like its Christian counterpart.

But one need not go this far. Below I will briefly suggest one way in which we can account for our belief in others’ good disposition towards us, and therefore rationally trust them, without reducing trust to reliance on any of the features of human nature considered so far. I will leave you to judge whether you think this way of understanding trust is plausible.

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