Ethical theorizing about trust presupposes a social structure it never examines

Evidence

One could keep to the old view that this way of treating the problem is determined by its subject of reference and, to that extent, is correct. To demand more precision than the subject offers would be irrational and could lead to erroneous, excessive abstractions. This long-established argument is not to be refuted by direct rebuttal. But that does not settle the questions of its cognitive value, of whether it is even answering the right question of what its basic premises are, and, above all, of how it stands in relation to the structure of the social order which it presupposes in its premises. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 303

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to reader’s thesis: Luhmann is setting up why ethics (the realm of facework/individual moral judgment) fails where system trust operates — the social order presupposed is precisely the institutional hierarchy Stevens inhabits.