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Moral contextualism often passes for cultural relativism; for example, it is viewed this way in Habermas’s cognitivist theory of norms, anchored in a theory of linguistic communication. To avoid this discursive cognitivism which indexes universal norms to truth, one must anchor norms below linguistic communication and the logic of claims to validity that are inscribed therein, in our practical rapport with the world, characterised above all by the trust that we place in it (trust being defined as a wager on expected behaviours). This article shows that norms (which determine actors’ expectations of reciprocal behaviours) also refer to this elementary fiduciary relationship, severing their cognitivist link to the truth.