Abstract
This chapter begins by sketching an account of morally responsible agency and the general conditions
under which it may fail. We discuss how far individuals with psychiatric diagnoses may be exempt
from morally responsible agency in the way that infants are, with examples drawn from a sample of
diagnoses intended to make dierent issues salient. We further discuss a recent proposal that
clinicians may hold patients responsible without blaming them for their acts. We also consider
cognitively impaired subjects in the light of related issues in moral and political theory, asking
whether they have been unjustly excluded from liberal conceptions of political community due to their
presumed lack of agency