“I trust.”
This simple phrase opens up a bottomless pit of perplexity, despite the fact that trust, when present in all its solidity, is purported to overcome any perplexity. The shifter or “clutch” of the phrase—the “I” behind the personal pronoun—is engaged, reminding us of a simple truth: the subject is personally involved in the act of trust, participating actively in granting it to the other. When defining trust, the lexicographer has no option but to do so via negation, as “the belief, spontaneous or acquired, in the value—professional, moral, emotional, etc.—of another person, which makes it impossible to imagine deception, betrayal, or incompetence on their part.” A literal translation of the equivalent French phrase, “J’ai confiance,” is “I have trust,” the auxiliary verb making it all the clearer that trust denotes an element of (subjective) belonging or affiliation.
A negative definition then, and a circular one too: I only trust when I detect no reason to regard somebody with suspicion or indeed to distrust them—to doubt the authenticity of the other, their intentions and actions; I trust when I am incapable of imagining betrayal by the other. How's that for a tautological definition? Considered as an act in its own right, however, trust falls within the jurisdiction of belief; when we grant somebody our trust, we are “banking” on them—we believe we can count on them. It is an act that counters the possibility of betrayal. We “believe in the other,” yet at the same time cannot rule out the possibility of revoking this belief when reasons for “taking back our trust” present themselves…