Trust in politics

As you watch the television and listen to a politician speak, looking at their eyes and the twitches about their mouth, do you trust them? Do you believe that they are telling the truth?

It’s called ‘spin’ these days, which could be as harsh as ‘propaganda’, or just ‘putting the best face forward’.

But being persuaded to believe something requires trust that is activated through a conversation.

Professor Raimond Gaita has been thinking about the role that conversation plays in democratic politics.

There are right ways and wrong ways to come to believe something, he says.

“The essence of that,” says Gaita, “is that it’s not manipulative.”

Gaita talks of a ‘call to reason’, a moment in a conversation where the truth is called out, when one person says to the other ‘What do you take me for?’ and demands respect.

Conversation and its place in politics is not a new topic to philosophy. In fact, Socrates attacked the spin-masters of his day: the orators.

“Socrates did not look upon oratory as a morally neutral skill that could serve good or bad ends, he regarded it, as many now regard spin, as rotten through and through.”

The Emeritus Professor of Kings College London is giving a series of public lectures on ‘Prejudice, Reason and Understanding’ at ANU as a part of the Frielich Foundation’s Eminent Lecture series.