Responding to Trust MATTHEW HARDING Abstract. The essay considers what respect demands and what trust demands when one person trusts another. What respect requires in responding to trust is substan- tial but limited, ranging from the sharply proscriptive to the mildly prescriptive. What trust requires is, in a sense, unlimited, its content depending on the extent to which the person who trusts, and more importantly the person who is trusted, seek to build a relationship characterised by trust and trustworthiness. The principle of respect for others makes certain demands of us, and these demands take the form of obligations. The obligatory demands of respect may be understood in light of what we owe to each other insofar as we are persons: They are moral demands. The phenomenon of interpersonal trust also makes demands of us, but in a different way. The normative world of trust is not a moral world, and the language of obligation is foreign to it (Hardin 1993, 505, 512; 1996, 26, 28; 2002, 74–8). However, it is a normative world nonetheless. The normativity of trust may be understood, not in light of what we owe to each other, but rather in light of our creative capacity as self-directed individuals, in particular our capacity to create and shape relationships with others that bring meaning and value to our lives. This essay is about what respect demands and what trust demands when one person trusts another. Those demands—some obligatory, others norma- tive in a different sense—constrain and direct how a person who is trusted responds and should respond to trust. The essay first considers what respect requires of a person who is trusted, and then turns to the requirements of trust. In brief, the argument is as follows. What respect requires in responding to trust is substantial but limited, ranging from the sharply proscriptive to the mildly prescriptive. The most substantial of these requirements is the moral injunction not to betray a person’s trust. What trust requires is, in a sense, unlimited, its content depending on the extent to which the person who trusts, and more importantly the person who is trusted, seek to build a relationship characterised by trust and trustworthi- ness. When the demands of trust are relatively unbounded within the setting of a certain relationship, the appropriate response to trust may be loyalty. Ratio Juris. Vol. 24 No. 1 March 2011 (75–87) © 2011 The Author. Ratio Juris © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden 02148, USA.