The Ethical Dimension Of Social Trust In The Information Era

Nowadays there exist two different paths to the trust crisis. One focuses on the social institute in the perspective of positivism, which declares that crisis is the "consequence of modernity" aroused by the institute rearrangements and changes. To avoid the trust crisis, we must rebuild public compelling laws first of all. The other pays attention to the values of beliefs and ethics in the position of humanism, which regards the crisis as a doubt about the "rationality" of modernization. The trust crisis can be solved firstly by restructuring pervasive values and then applied into people's rational life.Coming along with the information era, there appear new analyses of the trust crisis. First, trust is good expectation which arises from the interaction among various social forces. Second, the characteristics of opening equality, self-determination, etc, in the information era, have collapsing the foundation of the traditional society. Finally, the public good will constitute the value core of social trust. Public good emerging from public sphere which is full of liberty and equality will become the ethical dimension of social trust in the information era.