Vertrauen

LUHMANN, Niklas, 2009. Vertrauen: ein Mechanismus der Reduktion sozialer Komplexität. . Nachdr. d. 4. Aufl. Stuttgart: Lucius & Lucius. UTB für Wissenschaft Soziologie fachübergreifend, 2185. ISBN 978-3-8252-2185-0.

André Kieserling: There are books by Niklas Luhmann that address sociologically obvious topics, and there are other publications with which he responds to current interests of a broader public. The book on trust, which first appeared in 1968, does not belong in either category. If the text had not been published at that time, probably no one would have missed it: neither in sociology, which will discover the trust topic only later, nor in the world of mass media, where other issues were found to be of priority at that time. One may therefore assume that the choice of topic was primarily motivated by theory.

The book begins with very general considerations which, as is typical for Luhmann in this period, combine phenomenological with system-theoretical means of thinking. Against the objective concept of Time of the modern sciences, which refers to quantities of dated events, Luhmann argues that the only subjective classification of these events as future or present or past, as seen from there, may not simply be faded out or neutralized in the frame of reference of a sociological theory. For the order of social contacts, these modes of time are by no means to be regarded as symmetrical; rather, there is a special position of the meaning-constituting present, in which alone communication can take place, compared to the past and the future, both of which count only as horizons of this constant, albeit event-dependent moving present.

Luhmann (V, 8 ff.) takes from these analyses the thesis that the time reference of trust can only be elucidated if it is understood as the realization of a future that remains open. Trust is not based on the fact that the future actions of other people would be quite certain now. It does not presuppose effective behavioral control. The freedom of the other person is therefore not negated by trusting him. Their troubling aspects only take a form that makes it easier to face them in the present. Concepts such as 'symbol', 'generalization', 'expectation', all of which have the sense of an 'appresentation' (Husserl) of something not fully present, are therefore also of bearing for the theory of trust.

Starting from such premises, the book then focuses on one topic, namely the guarantee and gain of personal trust (V, 40 ff.), and does so by distinguishing it from two other facts: from the local familiarity with certain things, people, typical situations (17 ff.), and from the more or less inevitable systemic trust in the anonymous institutional complexes of the economy, science and politics as well as in the communication media of money, truth and power that underpin them (50 ff.). In all three cases, one relies on behavioral expectations that are ultimately fulfilled only by people who are unpredictable for each other - and which can therefore also be disappointed in any case. The difference lies, on the one hand, in the question whether one is aware of the projective character of the expectation, i.e. whether one sees the danger of disappointment at all and does not rather repress it, and it lies, on the other hand, in whether one also experiences this danger as a risk, namely also as a consequence of one's own decision. In the area of familiarity, there is already a lack of the possibility to distinguish the expectation from its subject and to make clear its subjectivity or system relativity: The familiar person is simply as one has come to know him. In the realm of system trust, together with the expectation character of a future projection, one also sees the dangers of disappointment, but has no possibility of avoiding them by making one's own decisions. For example, one knows that the economy is afflicted by periodic crises and devaluations of money, but one does not seriously consider decoupling one's life from the money economy and therefore cannot see the possible being affected by such crises as a consequence of one's own decisions, i.e. not as a risk, but only as a danger.

Only in the area of personal trust is this different. Here, the danger of disappointment is seen as a consequence of one's own decision - and thus also the object of possible remorse: One sees the possible sense, namely the possible protective function of a distrustful attitude towards the other person - and then trusts him anyway for the sake of the advantages that can only be achieved in this way. Trust and mistrust are thus interrelated in the form of an alternative, not only at the moment of decision, but permanently and in such a way that even trust, once proven, reserves the changeover to mistrust and surrounds itself with critical sensitivities for this emergency (78 ff.). Trust can turn into mistrust, and the person to whom it applies knows and takes this into account.

Viewed quite abstractly, the concept of personal trust refers to situations in which the general advantages of a social order, namely the expansion of the range of expectable actions, can only come about by one of the participants venturing forward with his own action, even if he does not yet know how the other will react to it. Situations of this kind occur en masse, and even the most trivial request for something not self-evident would be an example of this. A special problem of trust arises only where that first determination is particularly risky, for example, because it is made to an unfamiliar person and at the same time puts that person in a position not only to be unhelpful but to cause excessive harm (23 ff.). Damage is always excessive if it cannot simply be counted among the necessary expenses, but would force one to regret one's own commitment in retrospect. This is the case, for example, when one asks not one's own sister but a stranger to look after one's child for an evening - and thus enables him to become really dangerous. Or when you ask a fellow passenger in the train compartment if he can watch your own luggage - and thus inform him that this would be the right time for a theft to go unnoticed. Or when you confide in a colleague that you think your superior is hopelessly incompetent - thus giving him the opportunity to commit the indiscretion.

The alternative to trust in all these cases would be to consider only those possibilities whose condition one oneself acts as. One would then have to accept a correspondingly narrower radius of action: without trust in the babysitter, no movie night with friends; without trust in fellow travelers, no possibility of going to the dining car without luggage; without trust in colleagues, no participation in informal communication, etc. This is the strategy of the distrustful, which Luhmann treats in a double perspective: once as an individual strategy with strong projective features (78 ff.) and then also as a possible subject of social regulation, which then advises, for example, increased distrust of strangers or unknown people (94 ff.) and is only able to legitimize distrust of 'one's own people' under special precautions, such as those given in organizations.

The strategy of trust, on the other hand, has the advantage of expanding one's own radius of action, even if only by assuming and internally hedging a risk (27 ff.). By internal hedging, Luhmann means that the trusting party commits himself to a subjective view of the other, namely, that he considers him trustworthy, and then continuously controls the risks of this view on the basis of certain objective clues in the other's behavior. Thus, it is not the trusted person who is controlled - if one could do that, trust would be superfluous or identical with mistrust - but one's own attitude toward the other is controlled, and for this it is sufficient to be able to assess the trust-critical aspects of his behavior. Precisely because of this symptomatic significance, even small unevenness can gain a great symbolic significance - a typical state of affairs in view of generalized expectations.

Relationships based on personal trust must find their support in themselves. They cannot be prescribed by society, but at best facilitated. This results not least from their function to relieve the normative apparatus of society. Luhmann's distance to a normative view of the trust issue, as it would suggest itself from Parsons, becomes clear at various points. For example, the trusting person's commitment is not seen as a fulfillment of duty, but as a 'supererogatory' action, i.e. as an action that cannot be expected normatively, but which earns respect if it occurs nevertheless. It corresponds to the absence of a social prefix that such relationships are based on the binding character of precisely the freely chosen action. They presuppose unexpected initiatives which, according to the choice of subject and partner, are personally attributable - and which, for this very reason, cannot simply oblige the person thus addressed, but only provoke him to make his own decisions. More than through mere fulfillment of one's duty, one can therefore become visible as an individual in such unpredictable actions. This is an important motive for trust - but of course it also individualizes the risk involved, and this is precisely what may make trusting commitment more difficult.

This leads to the question that is perhaps most directly related to the norm theme, namely in what way the distribution of legally secured sanction possibilities can facilitate the granting of trust (33 ff.). It is not a new sociological thesis that trust in unknowns is easier if one can assume that the other person will face a severe punishment in case of a breach of trust. The interesting thesis is that such a calculation with the possibility of sanctions is contrary to the expressive style of trust, simply because it testifies to mistrust. The assumption that the other person can only be prevented from deceiving me by sanctions cannot be communicated to him without openly defining him as an adversary. Consequently, such a consideration is best carried out tacitly. Here, incidentally, lies an explanation for why explicit agreement on contracts is often avoided, even and especially in economic life (Macauley 1963). The anticipation of a legal dispute that lies therein brings the relationship into a climate unfavorable to trust.

Trust, once proven, has a self-reinforcing effect. It is difficult to disappoint it (V, 66 ff.). This is not only a consequence of moral disapproval. It follows above all from the excessive demand that would then occur. Whoever wants to disappoint the trust placed in him must control two identities at the same time: the identity in which the other trusts continuously, but by no means uncritically, and the identity constituted in the breach of trust. This overtaxes the normal capacity of all those who have not undergone training as secret agents and do not enjoy competent support for their double life from large organizations. It is easier to abuse proven trust, Luhmann argues, if further contact with the deceived can be avoided. The fact that this condition cannot be met in the case of love-cheating on a spouse makes infidelity a notoriously punishing affair that, as Luhmann points out, "seldom springs from balanced deliberation" (70).

Thus, it is not impeccable ethics but the otherwise threatening complexity overload that teaches loyalty to the trusting partner. This also explains why stable relationships of trust can very well start with only feigned trustworthiness. Whoever wants to continue them must also continue that initially only fictitious identity, and that too is easier if one adapts reality to fiction and becomes the one who one had previously only simulated to be. In the fate of the routine seducer, who in the end has to love seriously, this motif is also known from novel literature.

Luhmann reproduces the conventional ethics of trust (one should only trust when the other person really deserves it) as follows: one should only trust when it is not really necessary. The problem, however, is not justified trust, but unjustified trust, "which justifies itself and thereby becomes creative" (86). Thus, it is not about the complexity already reduced in objective characteristics of the other, which one would only have to recognize accurately, but about a reduction of complexity that is attributable to the social relationship as its own achievement. The fact that proven trust can educate, i.e. change its reference persons, is only one example among others for this 'constructivist effect' of trust.

Such insights into the partly self-supporting character of a trust, which compensates the lack of objective reasons by its own achievements, are first of all a piece of sociological theory, developed for the purposes of science and thus without regard to whether this theory or a social knowledge corresponding to it could also be imposed on the participants, or whether a more precise knowledge of the functioning of trust would undermine it. Is not an ethics, which makes the agent believe that there are characteristics, which can be determined independently of trust and which justify his trust, precisely in its peculiar simplicity a necessary contribution to the reduction process, which a more complex theory can only describe, but not replace?

In order to answer this question, Luhmann creates a concept for the reflexive nature of trust, i.e. for the fact that instead of being directed at a supposedly trustless fact, it is directed at something that is itself already constituted by trust (72 ff.). Thus, trust in money, without it always being or having to be completely clear to its users, is ultimately based only on the fact that others also trust in money - and not, for instance, on a covering by any material equivalents. But not only the trust of third parties, but also the trust that the other shows me, and not least my own trust in another, I can meet with reflexive trust - in this latter case by making clear to myself that my trust can not only bind and oblige the other, but also improve him - and thereby provide myself with a further motive for trust.

Luhmann explains a similar state of affairs with the institution of the perceptive tact. Tact means, first of all, that one spares the self-representation of the other, even if one has recognized its fractures and could expose them. One knows, for example, that the other person presents himself better than he is, but one refrains from destroying the beautiful appearance. Perhaps one simply wants to continue the interaction undisturbed, and the beat was initially invented as a mere interaction technique. This kind of tact, of course, like all polite behavior, is subject to the proviso that its addressee must not take it seriously. But it is also possible to consider that the idealizing self-presentation will oblige the other to stay with it, and thus one gains an additional motive to spare it, which can then also be presented seriously and with the prospect of continuing in other situations.

In reflexive attitudes and behavior patterns of this type, which are admittedly demanding and cannot be expected in arbitrary situations, Luhmann sees certain signs that a kind of post-ontological trust is possible and is already practiced, which sees the other person already by itself as a system in an environment in which the trusting person in turn occurs again, instead of only as an object with certain properties. Such trust cannot be unsettled even by sociological analyses.

In the penultimate chapter, Luhmann argues that this reflexive trust also presupposes other foundations in the persons who are to muster it (85 ff.). In place of an immobile emotional attachment to the other, which simply represses the possible breach of trust and is therefore overwhelmed when it comes to it, there is a more flexible attitude, which is essentially based on trusting one's own capacity for adaptive self-representation as well as the readiness of others to interpret it tactfully - and this also and especially for the particularly critical case that at some point one finds oneself the victim of a breach of trust.

A sociological discussion of trust that does not simply equate the term with solidarity – as Luhmann's (1988, 94) critique of Eisenstadt (1984) – does not actually get off the ground until the early 1980s. At that time, Luhmann's book already exists in an English translation (cf. Luhmann 1979), and authors such as Bernard Barber (1983), Diego Gambetta (1988), and later, very clearly, Anthony Giddens (1990) can refer to it. The anthology by Hartmann and Offe (2001) documents parts of this state of affairs for the German audience. The book is thus one of the few publications by Luhmann that are read outside the German-speaking world. In the work history of its author, however, the text forms a comparatively isolated complex. While other topics are treated again and again, there is only one productive passage for the trust topic, which is older than the trust book (FuF, 71 ff.), and only a few submissions of more recent date. Social Systems (1984) sums up the book's argumentation in a few pages (SS, 179 ff.); an essay in English published a few years later merely adds some considerations to the well-known theses on system trust that are already oriented toward George Spencer-Brown's calculus of forms (Luhmann 1988), and the book on risk (SdR, 132 ff. ) finally states that personal trust is characterized by a personal union of decision risk and being affected, while the actual risk issues have their explosiveness by the fact that one sees oneself affected, namely endangered, by the risky decisions of others.

Barber, Bernard: The Logic and Limits of Trust. New Brunswick, NJ 1983.

Eisenstadt, Shmuel N./Roniger, Luis: Patrons, Clients and Friends: Interpersonal Relations and the Structure of Trust in Society. Cambridge 1984.

Gambetta, Diego (Hg.): Making and Breaking of Cooperative Relations. New York 1988.

Giddens, Anthony: The Consequences of Modernity. Stanford, CA 1990.

Hartmann, Martin/Offe, Claus (Hg.): Vertrauen. Die Grundlage des sozialen Zusammenhalts. Frankfurt a. M. 2001.

Luhmann, Niklas: Trust and Power. Chichester 1979. –: »Familiarity, Confidence, Trust: Problems and Alternatives«. In: Gambetta 1988, 94–109.

Macauley, Steward: »Non-Contractual Relations in Business«. In: American Sociological Review 28. Jg., 1 (1963), 55–67.

JAHRAUS, Oliver, NASSEHI, Armin, GRIZELJ, Mario, SAAKE, Irmhild, KIRCHMEIER, Christian and MÜLLER, Julian (eds.), 2012. Luhmann-Handbuch: Leben – Werk – Wirkung. . Stuttgart: Verlag J.B. Metzler. ISBN 978-3-476-02368-1.