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On Confidence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

Nathan Rotenstreich
Nathan Rotenstreich
Affiliation:
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
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Extract

Confidence or trust is obviously a sort of reliance or dependence. Confidence is related to fiducia, which in turn is related to fido and to the Greek peitho. The latter term implies persuasion or persuasiveness. If we follow, as we should, the nuances hidden in these terms, we may assume that confidence is a reliance stemming from persuasion or accompanied by it. Confidence may be related to a person, including oneself, and in this sense we speak of self-confidence; or it may be related to another person, either in the singular or in the plural, or even perhaps to the course of events at large, to history, to the cosmos, to God etc. It is in this sense that confidence is the opposite of or contradictory to fear. And Aristotle indeed placed the brave man between the two poles of fear and confidence. The man who exceeds in confidence is rash, and he who exceeds in fear and falls short in confidence is a coward.

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Type
Articles
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Philosophy , Volume 47 , Issue 182 , October 1972 , pp. 348 - 358
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1972

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References

1 Nicomachean Ethics 1107 b.Google Scholar

2 Kritik der Reinen Vernunft B. p. 845Google Scholar; Smith, Kemp's transl. London, 1965 p. 645.Google Scholar

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9 There is a certain parallelism between the assumption of constancy as implied in expectation and confidence in general, and the assumption of constancy in the phenomenon of responsibility. Consult on this: Ingarden, Roman: Über die Verantwortung; Ihre Ontischen Fundamente Stuttgart, 1970, mainly pp. 51 ff.Google Scholar

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