Spontaneous Disorder in Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments: Resentment, Injustice, and the Appeal to Providence

Adam Smith is celebrated for championing spontaneous order, most famously with regard to economic markets but more recently in his moral and political theory. Yet scholars who see an "invisible hand" at work in creating psychological harmony and political order often underestimate the disharmony endemic to moral spectatorship, most importantly with regard to the critical issue of justice. We show that resentment, the inherently discordant passion Smith identifies as the motive for justice, poses an enduring threat to individual happiness and social harmony insofar as unsatisfied resentment persists both with regard to violations of justice in the narrow sense of injury to persons and property and of justice in the broader sense as a desire for punishments and rewards to be proportionate to moral desert. We further show how Smith makes appeals to providence that provide consolatory promises of ultimate harmony at the very points where psychic disorder persists, and we suggest that these appeals are naturalistic extensions of moral spectatorship itself. By bringing the problems related to resentment and injustice to the fore, we show the limitations of spontaneous order in the moral and political realms in Smith's theory.