Trust as a distinct social phenomenon emerged only under modern conditions of risk

Evidence

1. Adam Seligman (1997, 13–15) claims that trust as we know it is a strictly modern concept because it arises out of strictly modern conditions. This is a perhaps Platonic stipulation in its own right. Niklas Luhmann (1988, 96) makes a similar claim: “Trust comes with the discovery or reconceptualization of life as involving risk in early modern times.” — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 899

Categorization

Category: Definitional Content

• XREF: Directly links to Luhmann, whom the reader is integrating with Saramago’s blindness novel — Luhmann’s risk-based trust baseline is exactly the thesis the reader is testing against the collapse of observability.
• DEFINE: Defines trust as modern via its linkage to risk, contrasting with Hardin’s encapsulated-interest conception of trust as ancient and universal.

Related

• Trust is a distinctly modern concept tied to risk-awareness. (similarity 0.94)
• Trust solves problems of risk but operates only within a familiar world (similarity 0.86)
• Familiarity prevents trust from becoming a conscious problem; doubt reopens it. (similarity 0.85)
• Trust requires genuine vulnerability and the partner’s real interest in betraying it (similarity 0.85)
• Trust means predicating one’s actions on others’ risky actions (similarity 0.84)
• Luhmann reframed trust as social, not merely psychological (similarity 0.84)
• Universal trust can be rational in sufficiently benign worlds despite Luhmann (similarity 0.83)
• System trust rests on expectations that most won’t test the system (similarity 0.83)
• Trust is a kind of knowledge grounded in trustworthy evidence (similarity 0.83)
• Trust in experts is trust in impersonal systems, not in individuals (similarity 0.83)
• Trust is a cognitive state of belief, not an action or purpose (similarity 0.83)
• Trust needs concrete settings and visibility to be tested against risk. (similarity 0.83)
• Trust involves a calculable asymmetry of possible harm, while hope does not (similarity 0.83)
• Trust is a degree of expected probability, not a separate decision layered onto risk. (similarity 0.83)
• Trust is a policy for coping with uncertainty about others’ freedom. (similarity 0.83)

Broader Connections

• Social complexity forces the shift from personal to impersonal, system-governed trust. #expands (0.90) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 208
• Growing social complexity increases the need for trust in the present #expands (0.80) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 122
• Moral trust requires temporally stable social contexts to operate #expands (0.78) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 85
• Trust historically extended far beyond the narrow modern friend circle #complicates (0.75) — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 2415
• Trust solves problems of risk but operates only within a familiar world #qualifies (0.72) — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 1334