A specifically moral reaction to what we feel to be an injurious action or event that manifests ill-will or neglect. Resentment typically includes anger, ill-feeling, or even hatred, and desire to punish the perpetrator. But according to Adam Smith the purpose of resentment is not so much to cause pain to the agent in return, but to ‘bring him back to a just sense of what is due to other people, to make him sensible of what he owes us, and of the wrong that he has done to us’. A perpetrator’s genuine repentance or atonement can therefore assuage resentment without any actual punishment. It follows as well that inanimate and animal causes of injury cannot properly be the objects of resentment, since this aim can have no bearing on them. See also indignation.