Abstract

Broken trust elicits two types of responses: On the one hand, an epistemic response: How could I be so mistaken? How can I learn to trust more appropriately? On the other hand, a moral response: How could you deceive me so deeply and hurt me so profoundly? Even though the response in a given case may be more epistemically or morally emphasized, their interrelation raises two theoretically challenging questions: (1) How can a unity of the epistemic and normative dimensions of trust be reflected in theories; thus far, these dimensions tend to diverge in predominant approaches that model trust either epistemically or normatively (e.g. evidential vs. assurance view). (2) How can it be understood that it is constitutive of trust that it can be broken, and that it is constitutive of trust that there is no risk in the very essence of trusting. The present paper proposes a response to these two questions.