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Adam Smith
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Hatred and resentment, Smith argues, are imagination-born passions that must be reduced far below their natural pitch before we can regard them as graceful. Sympathy is divided between the injured person and the offender, so our fellow-feeling with the victim always falls short of his anger. Yet we despise those who endure insult without spirit, and crowds demand that the injured party defend himself, applauding restrained retaliation when patience has been generous.
The ugliness of unsocial passions comes chiefly from their immediate effects. Remote benefits of resentment as a guardian of justice do not sweeten its present face, just as a useful prison remains repellent while a palace pleases the imagination through present convenience. Surgical instruments disgust though finely made; musical trophies charm. Anger's hoarse discord drives us away, unlike plaintive grief or smiling joy, which nature seems designed to communicate less easily than hatred.
Complete sympathy with revenge therefore requires grave provocation, plain open deportment, and evidence that humanity survives the passion. We should resent because propriety and the impartial spectator demand it, not because fury feels pleasant. Magnanimity alone can ennoble this disagreeable passion, and when resentment is guarded, reluctant, and proportioned, Smith allows it may even be generous.
People may agree you were wronged and still withdraw when your anger exceeds what they can comfortably simulate. Smith shows that resentment must be humbled to stay socially legible, even when injury is real.
If you need allies this week, pair clear evidence of harm with expression they can stay near without flinching.
Having explored the difficult emotions that drive people apart, Smith turns to examine the social passions that bind us together. He'll reveal how love, gratitude, and compassion work differently in our moral calculations - and why they're so much easier to share with others..
What this chapter proves — the pattern beneath the scene
In this chapter, the lesson is Separating Justice from Beneficence.
The card below names the pattern this chapter proves — carry it with you into the original text.
Separating Justice from Beneficence
Resentment must be brought far below its natural pitch before a spectator can enter it. Sympathy is split between the injured person and the offender. Crowds still demand spirit from the injured party, then applaud a measured reply. Smith treats that guarded anger as a guardian of justice, not a virtue we enjoy looking at.
Key Insight
Justice needs a passion that looks ugly up close. The remote use of resentment does not sweeten its present face.
Chapter 08
Of the unsocial passions. There is another set of passions, which though derived from the imagination, yet before we can enter into them, or regard them as graceful or becoming, must always be brought down to a pitch much lower than that to which undisciplined nature would raise them. These are hatred and resentment, with all their different modifications. With regard to all such passions, our sympathy is divided between the person who feels them and the person who is the object of them. The interests of these two are directly opposite. What our sympathy with the person who feels…
Public-domain chapter text, formatted for reading.
Think of a recent situation where you felt angry or frustrated with someone's behavior - at work, in your family, or in your community. Write out what happened from your perspective, then rewrite the same situation as if you were addressing it from 'social duty' rather than personal anger. How would your approach change?
Write about a time when you were right about an issue but handled it in a way that pushed people away. What would you do differently now, knowing about the isolation that righteous anger can create?
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Other theme-by-theme analyses from this book.
Divide yourself into two persons in chapter 26, and let the one who did not act pass sentence.
Stand at the rack in chapter 1, then at the slack rope, and watch imagination do what the senses refuse.
Hear that every man is first recommended to his own care, then watch the miser and the cheat use the same sentence.
Stay with the stone we curse, the office the friend failed to get, and the court that must not become an inquisition of wishes.
Watch the poor man go unheeded in a crowd, then the toil whose only end is a neighbor's admiration.
Deep diving the literary elements.
Guides, life skills, and the full library.More ways to read The Theory of Moral Sentiments: guides, life skills, and the wider library.
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