Law and trust separate as social orders grow more complex.

Evidence

In all more sharply differentiated, more complex social orders, on the contrary, it is inevitable for law and trust to become separate in this way. Risks are individualized; showing trust is no longer so strongly socially required and controlled; he who is in breach of trust is entitled to put forward excuses, to lay claim to extenuating circumstances. Above all, at the societal level, legal situations and norms have become too differentiated, and trust is too general and diffuse a social claim, for them to overlap widely. Finally, law and trust stand apart from one another also in their motivational bases. Conformity with law can be motivated by society only indirectly and impersonally, and can be guaranteed only with the aid of an ‘ultimate means’, namely, physical force. Trust, on the contrary, rests on motivational sources of a different nature, such as personal readiness to take risks, or concrete proof. As the social order itself becomes more differentiated and complex, the number of possibilities it opens up for experience and action increases. As a consequence, also, the mechanisms for the reduction of complexity must become differentiated, assume a more specific configuration, and operate more effectively. In view of the sociological and theoretical problems which now demand solution, it would no longer be rational for law and trust to coincide fully. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 174

Categorization

• XREF: Directly connects to the reader’s thesis: Stevens’s deference is trust-like (risk-taking, personal commitment), while legality in Britain is impersonal and force-backed — the two operate in different registers, which Ishiguro dramatizes when Darlington’s ‘legal’ hospitality regime masks morally ungrounded trust.
• DEFINE: Clarifies Luhmann’s core distinction: law is motivated indirectly and backed by physical force, while trust rests on personal risk-readiness and concrete proof.