Frames of deceit a study of the loss and recovery of public and private trust

Abstract

Frames of Deceit is a philosophical investigation of the nature of trust in public and private life. It examines how trust originates, how it is challenged, and how it is recovered when moral and political imperatives collide. In politics, rulers may be called upon to act badly for the sake of a political good, and in private life intimate attachments are formed in which the costs of betrayal are high. This book asks how trust is tested by human goods, moral character, and power relations. The author explores whether an individual's experience of betrayal differs totally from that of a community when it loses and then seeks to recover a vital public trust. Although this is a work of political philosophy, it is distinctive in examining three literary texts - Sophocles' Philoctetes, Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, and Zola's Therese Raquin - in order to deepen our understanding of the place of trust in morality and politics. This is a book of interest to moral and political philosophers as well as to literary theorists.