The role of punishment in the works of Adam Smith

Abstract

The reformation of criminal justice is one of the great themes in Enlightenment culture and concerned its main exponents from Montesquieu to Beccaria, Filangieri, Bentham. One of the traits of greater modernity in the theories worked out by juridical Enlightenment is the resort to the utilitarianinspired economic analysis. Adam Smith doesn't back out of this scientific and civil commitment, but his doctrine appears significantly different though contemporary to juridical Enlightenment, and is also based on economic argumentations. In this work we will look through the main writings which contain the Smithian thought in search of those parts dealing with the theme of punishment and its social function, pointing out the differences with what was being divulged by other authors of the Enlightenment. We will try to explain this distance by going back to the different epistemological vision between Scottish doctrine of natural law and European utilitarianism, offering some hints for a reconsideration of the role Smith has in the history of economic thought.