Between Exemption and Excuse

Abstract

Abstract In ‘Freedom and Resentment’, P.F. Strawson famously marks a distinction between agents who are proper targets of our reactive attitudes and practices and those who are not. Agents in the first category are responsible, though sometimes excused, for their (putative) wrongdoings; agents in the second category are not responsible and thereby exempted from ordinary reactive attitudes and practices. Basic as this distinction is to Strawson’s general line on responsible agency, it is, as he acknowledges, a murky one. Not only is the division between responsible and non-responsible agents presumed to be fuzzy, Strawson further suggests that the appropriate treatment of agents in this shadowy zone is correspondingly complex. This chapter explores a distinctive line on the nature of responsible agency, as well as our reactive attitudes and practices that indicates how and why they may be appropriately directed to a range of agents typically relegated to the exempted side of this putative divide. While this may seem to run contrary to Strawson’s general approach to responsible agency, the chapter argues that it does not; in fact, it makes good sense of the suggestive and sketchy remarks he makes regarding how agents transit out of this ‘borderline penumbral area’ into full-blown responsible agency.