ABSTRACT
III If we leave aside limits imposed by what are widely accepted at any given time as the largely unalterable natural conditions of all human life, it would by now be difficult to deny that there are illnesses and disorders, commonly characterized as mental, that severely narrow (as against what have come to be our expectations) the range of actions possible for those who suffer those illnesses and which grossly distort their in some respects action-like performances. In some cases these limitations and distortions are so striking that others come to think of such human beings not as agents but as subjects, and to regard their performances not as actions but as movements or behaviors. These arresting and deeply unsettling phenomena provide a starting point for wider consideration of the thesis that factors “internal” to human beings render them unfree.
