<p>The aim of this article is to present the problem of individual responsibility in (what we call) <i>agency-stultifying situations</i> and examine whether exemplarism can be a more promising way of addressing it than prevailing moral theories. <i>Agency-stultifying situations</i> are situations in which the actions of a sufficiently large number of individuals produce a cumulative harm, but where none of these individuals, in isolation, can make a difference in bringing about or preventing said harm, and where the individuals do not act with the intention of causing the cumulative harm either. Articulating the kind of responsibility an individual may bear in such situations is extremely complex since it cannot be done by appealing to individual consequences or intentions. We argue that this poses a serious challenge for the theories most commonly deployed when trying to account for individual moral responsibility – notably consequentialism and Kantian deontology. Then, we turn to Linda Zagzebski’s Exemplarist Moral Theory (EMT) and argue that EMT has major strengths that help to shed light on the problem of individual responsibility in agency-stultifying situations. EMT offers a culturally-embedded, relational and inherently motivational account which is rooted in the cultivation of admiration and imitation of exemplars, a cultivation sensitive to cultural narratives. Moral exemplars, through their capacity to elicit reflective admiration in others, provide a powerful model for moral reasoning and action, providing orientation on how to navigate complex ethical situations. However, EMT also faces some challenges that revolve around the problem of finding appropriate exemplars for new situations, as well as more general questions concerning how to identify genuinely admirable exemplars, the suitability of exemplars as a models beyond their admirability, and the theory’s inability to provide concrete moral guidance in certain situations.</p>