Epistemic trust is an axiom of dialogical epistemology. It refers to the ethical relation between the Ego-Alter and has deep roots in daily life. Epistemic trust makes sense only in relation to its opposite, whether distrust, mistrust, doubt, risk or danger. I have explored two basic and mutually overlapping forms of epistemic trust/distrust. One form concerns the participants’ presupposition, or the lack of it that they live in a temporarily shared social world comprising a common ground for understanding and interpretation of their social reality. The other form refers to the capacity and readiness of participants (or the lack of it) to learn and accept knowledge and experience from one another. When established, epistemic trust is implicitly taken for granted, and it forms the common ground for understanding of the social reality, of common values and intentions to aim at ‘good life’. Epistemic trust is historically and culturally embedded and it ranges from micro-social to macro-social forms. The chapter discusses epistemic trust focusing on authority and positions of trust, on communicative contracts of secrets and non-disclosure, the hermeneutics of trust and the hermeneutics of suspicion. It shows some examples of complex relations of trust/distrust, such as the dialogicality of confession.

This Chapter is concerned with axioms and concepts of dialogical epistemology derived from the Ego-Alter interdependence. This interdependence is always about something, i.e. about objects or events, or about reflections on the Self’s and the Other(s)’ thoughts, imaginations and actions. I have referred to triangular relations between the Ego-Alter-Object in two ways. First, following Serge Moscovici’s ideas, there is a triangular relation between the Ego-Alter-Object of knowledge. Second, following the ideas of the anthropologist Louis Dumont, I have introduced the consumerist triadic relation the Ego-Alter-Thing of desire. Ethics in these two kinds of triangle follows different routes. In the former case, ethical relations between the Ego-Alter stem directly from intersubjectivity and the search for social recognition as the primary ontological relations. In the latter case, the ethical relations between the Ego-Alter are masked by the apparent priority given to the relation between the Self and the Thing of desire. In this case, the Ego’s search for social recognition, which superficially appears as craving for the Thing of desire, is in fact the desire for the desire of the Other’s desire. In other words, obtaining Objects of Others provides the Self with a social status and thus, with illusory social recognition.