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How Can I Be Trusted?

A Virtue Theory of Trustworthiness

Nancy Nyquist Potter author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Rowman & Littlefield

Published:19th Nov '02

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

How Can I Be Trusted? cover

This work examines the concept of trust in the light of virtue theory, and takes our responsibility to be trustworthy as central. Rather than thinking of trust as risk-taking, Potter views it as equally a matter of responsibility-taking. How Can I Be Trusted? illustrates that relations of trust are never independent from considerations of power, and that the trustee has a moral obligation not to exploit the vulnerability of the trusting person. Asking ourselves what we can do to be trustworthy allows us to move beyond adversarial trust relationships and toward a more democratic, just, and peaceful society.

How Can I Be Trusted? makes a valuable contribution to virtue ethics, as well as to our understanding of trust in a variety of relationships. Potter's experiences as a crisis counselor and philosophy teacher provide her with illuminating case studies, which serve wonderfully well to display the difficult and shifting demands of trustworthiness. -- Annette Baier, author of Moral Prejudices
Potter has thought carefully and well about a number of institutional and personal settings in which issues of trust are paramount, and her book contains a cogent critique of how dominant ways of thinking about our obligations to one another, particularly in certain important professional roles like counselor and teacher, have paid inadequate attention to issues of trust and trustworthiness, and are too reliant on internal institutional norms of conduct which immunize practitioners from serious challenges. * Metapsychology Online *
Nancy Potter takes philosophical reflections on trust in important new directions by exploring trustworthiness in such practical contexts as teaching and crisis counseling. -- Trudy Govier, University of Lethbridge, author of Forgiveness and Revenge and Taking Wrongs Seriously

ISBN: 9780742511514

Dimensions: 227mm x 150mm x 13mm

Weight: 299g

256 pages