Smith and Indignation: Appropriateness and Conservativism
Journal title RIVISTA DI STORIA DELLA FILOSOFIA
Author/s Francesco Toto
Publishing Year 2026 Issue 2026/1
Language Italian Pages 30 P. 151-180 File size 204 KB
DOI 10.3280/SF2026-001010
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The article in- vestigates the technical and systematic role of “indignation” in Adam Smith’s Theory. Whereas scholarship often conflates it with resentment, Smithian indignation is in- stead the spectator’s sympathetic adoption of the victim’s resentment. The analysis reconstructs the complex interplay between resentment, indignation, revenge, and pu- nishment, showing that Smith’s theory is structured around a fundamental tension: re- sentment drives punishment but risks excess, while impartial indignation is morally legitimate, but lacks the power to act. This tension raises doubts about Smith’s model of social self-regulation through sympathetic feelings alone, suggesting the necessity of a political authority capable of synthesizing drive and legitimacy by embodying an impartial spectator who is also an executor. The article concludes by examining the paradoxical possibility of legitimate indignation against a state that fails to perform this role and becomes an agent of injustice – a potentially revolutionary impulse that Smith ultimately tempers through a conservative, almost fatalistic, attachment to so- cial order.
Keywords: indignation, vengeance, punishment, state, rebellion.
Francesco Toto, Smith e l’indignazione: Appropriatezza e conservatorismo in "RIVISTA DI STORIA DELLA FILOSOFIA" 1/2026, pp 151-180, DOI: 10.3280/SF2026-001010