Please, Sir?

Here is a news item you are unlikely to read anytime soon: “A recent survey reports that Canadians have increasing faith in their institutions. Trust in business and political leaders is at an all-time high. Confidence in the spread of solid, reliable information is on the rise.”

Those things could, in fact, happen. But trust is a story only when it is slipping away. It is tricky even to speak of trust without destroying it: ask someone, “Do you trust me?” and watch their brow furrow. Nor is it clear what happens to trust once it is lost. Can a person or an idea or an institution win confidence they have lost? Should people rely on authorities, even when reason, education, or experience has taught them to be skeptical of widely accepted truths?

Such probing shows the difficulty of Mark Kingwell’s undertaking in Question Authority. A philosophy professor at the University of Toronto and the author of over two dozen books on everything from Plato to...