Precursory Trust and Apodictic Trust: A Confucian Response to Max Weber

Abstract Max Weber remarks that Confucianism was unconducive to the emergence of capitalism in premodern China because it did not foster trust among strangers, unlike Protestantism in Europe. In response, I propose a tripartite division of trust: (1) empirical trust based on observation; (2) precursory trust that is prereflective, not based on observation, but serves as an indispensable preunderstanding out of which empirical trust can emerge; and (3) apodictic trust that goes beyond empirical trust and claims that one should be inclusive toward people, not based on any desirable consequence but out of apodictic moral duty. This apodictic trust can be expressed as follows: “Trust a person unless one has good reasons not to do so.” Although this formula is not “unconditional” in the sense of Kantian ethics, I would still call it “apodictic” because it obliges people to trust one another in an indefinitely vast number of cases. Recent philosophical literature primarily focuses on empirical trust, but this essay presents a tripartite framework that expands the boundaries of trust beyond direct experience. I respond to Weber by a synthesis: Confucianism emphasizes precursory trust, while Protestantism stresses apodictic trust, yet some Confucian texts also convey the notion of apodictic trust.