I don't have a direct evidence that Kant meant the following analogy. But this idea of Kant's seems to me similar to the biblical prohibition to kill a human being "because he was made in the image of God". Human beings, according to the bible, have a divine essence in them, and therefore they must not to be killed. Human beings, according to Kant, have a moral rational essence in them, and therefore they must not be treated merely as means.
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Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Why does Kant consider "rational agents," humans, as ends in themselves and not means? Ask Question. Asked 4 years, 6 months ago. Active 4 years, 6 months ago. Viewed 4k times. This is according to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: "Kant argues that the moral law must be aimed at an end that is not merely instrumental, but is rather an end in itself.
Thank you. Improve this question. Never merely!!!!!!!! That means respect the fact that they are ends in themselves, especially when using humans in an instrumental way!
Yes but, why are they ends in themselves? British Broadcasting Corporation Home. An explanation of Kant's concept of "an end-in-itself", often put more informally as the idea that we should not "use" other people.
The philosopher Immanuel Kant said that rational human beings should be treated as an end in themselves and not as a means to something else. The fact that we are human has value in itself. If a person is an end-in-themself it means their inherent value doesn't depend on anything else - it doesn't depend on whether the person is enjoying their life, or making other people's lives better. We exist, so we have value. Suppose the promisor, a borrower, has the end of getting money from the promisee, a lender, without ever paying it back.
For according to our practice, it belongs to the very concept of making a loan, as opposed, say, to giving money away, that one believe that what one disburses will be repaid. However, this proposed sufficient condition might fail to register as treating others merely as means paradigmatic cases of doing so Kerstein — It would presumably be good if a sufficient condition for treating another merely as a means yielded the conclusion that the loiterer is treating the passerby merely as a means; for he is mugging her, which, intuitively speaking, seems to be a clear case of treating another merely as a means.
One might question whether the proposed sufficient condition does this. Even highly unlikely events are logically possible. If this possibility is realized, then the account would not count the loiterer as treating the passerby merely as a means. For example, the lender might believe that the borrower will pay him back, but share her end of her getting money from him without repaying it because he believes that if she does, she will bring about something he covets, namely, the demise of her reputation.
Some philosophers insist, however, that this sort of scenario is not logically possible; for in order to be making a loan to another, a person must not only believe that his money will be repaid, but want and hope that it will be Papadaki 78 , they say. This reading of possible end sharing might have implausible implications when incorporated into a principle according to which a person who uses another treats the other merely as a means if the other cannot share the end she is pursuing in using him Kerstein Consider young men hiking in the Rocky Mountains for the first time who find themselves on a mountain in late afternoon without water and unsure of the way down.
To their relief, they spot another hiker, someone whom they saw park his car in the same area below. They follow him, using his knowledge of the terrain to get down the mountain safely. The young men realize that they could, but choose not to, tell the hiker that they are following him. Out of embarrassment for their dependence on him, they ensure that they remain undetected.
The way they act prevents the man from choosing whether to contribute to the realization of their end. If the hiker fails to have a right not to be prevented from choosing whether to contribute to the young men getting safely down the mountain, then they do not treat him merely as a means according to the amended account. Of course, this amendment invites questions as to when a person has such a right, as well as making the account of treating others merely as means depend on an account of moral rights in a way that Korsgaard or Kant might not have intended.
In typical cases, it would be irrational for the promisee to try to realize the end of making a loan that is never to be repaid. The notion of practical irrationality at work here seems implicit in the Groundwork. Kant there — introduces a principle that Thomas Hill, Jr.
Willing an end presumably involves setting it and attempting to realize it. According to Kant, the hypothetical imperative is a principle of reason: all of us are rationally compelled to conform to this principle. An agent would be violating the hypothetical imperative and thus acting irrationally by willing an end yet, at the same time, willing another end, the attainment of which would, he is aware, make it impossible for him to take the otherwise available and necessary means to his original end.
An agent would violate the hypothetical imperative, for example, by willing now to buy a house and yet, at the same time, willing to use the money he knows he needs for the down payment to make a gift to his niece. If he willed to make the gift, he would be failing to will the necessary means in his power to buy the house. The Kantian hypothetical imperative implies that it is irrational to will to be thwarted in attaining ends that one is pursuing.
In typical cases, if a promisee willed the end of a false promisor, she would be doing just that. There are two things that an agent who has willed something can do which would bring his action into compliance with the hypothetical imperative.
He can either will the means that are necessary and in his power to the end which, of course, would rule out his willing to be thwarted in attaining the end or he can give up willing the end. For example, the hypothetical imperative would not imply that it was irrational for the person described above to cease willing now to buy a house and instead use the money that he knows would be required as a down payment on it to make a gift to his niece. By way of illustration, suppose that a doctor plans to use a healthy patient to obtain a heart and lungs for transplant, that is, to extract them from him in an operation that would kill him.
Her proximate end might also be her ultimate end, say, if she uses another to avoid pain. But her proximate end might be far removed from her ultimate end. Someone might, for example, use another to develop her skill as a violinist to earn a good living in an orchestra so she can put her little sisters through college, and so forth.
The account invokes proximate ends because they are far more intimately connected to the use that brings them about than ultimate ends need be. Yet, like the other accounts we have considered, this account is subject to criticism. One possible shortcoming stems from cases of competition Kerstein — Sometimes people have the end of being the sole winner in a competition. To begin, competitors sometimes count as treating one another as means.
In willing that A be top player of the year, B would, in effect, be willing to be thwarted in his attempt to win top player for the year, assuming that there can be no tie for top player.
Some might find this implication implausible. Sometimes becoming the best in some endeavor involves defeating and using competitors to do so. But defeating and using competitors to be the best, especially when they have freely entered a competition, need not amount to acting wrongly, some might insist. In the passage on false promising, Kant references possible consent. He suggests that the victim of the false promise cannot agree to the use the false promisor is making of him. Suppose, for example, that an appliance serviceperson tricks a customer into authorizing an expensive repair.
For he does not know what her action is, namely one of lying to him about what is wrong with his refrigerator. If he did know what her action was, then he would not be deceived. Or suppose that a mugger approaches you on a dark street, points a gun at you, and tells you that unless you give him all of your money, he will hurt you. He leaves you no opportunity to avert his use of you by withholding your consent.
Regardless of what you say, he is presumably going to use you, whether it is through your handing over your wallet or his violently taking it from you. Since you cannot consent to his action, the mugger is treating you merely as a means. The account is subject to objections. It does not suffice for an agent to treat another merely as a means that the other simply be unable to consent to the way he is being used, some argue.
If it did suffice, then a passerby giving cardiopulmonary resuscitation CPR to a collapsed jogger would be treating the jogger merely as a means and thus acting wrongly. But the passerby does not seem to be doing anything that is morally impermissible. In light of this objection, someone might propose a different account: Suppose an agent uses another. She uses him merely as a means if something she has done or is doing to the other renders him unable to consent to her using him.
So this account avoids the unwelcome implication that the passerby treats the collapsed jogger merely as a means. However, this account is also open to objection. First, it fails to designate as such some cases that we, intuitively speaking, would surely classify as treating others merely as means Kerstein Another person, who had no knowledge of or involvement in drugging the victim, sexually assaults him.
Since this other person has not rendered the victim unable to consent to his use of him, the account does not yield the conclusion that he treats him merely as a means. As you realize, if you told your sister-in-law about the party, she would be unable to keep the secret from your spouse. According to the account, you treat your sister-in-law merely as a means, since your deception leaves her with no opportunity to avert your use of her.
This conclusion seems questionable to some, albeit not to others. Here is another case of what some think of as morally permissible deception Parfit Suppose that, in order to save the life of an innocent witness to a crime, you use her to pass on a lie you have told her to the perpetrator, Brown. If Brown did not believe the lie, he would kill the witness. You realize that if you let the witness in on what was necessary to save her life and told her to lie to Brown herself, she would not be able to do so effectively.
Your treatment of the person renders impossible her consent to your use of her. But it is implausible to conclude that you are treating her merely as a means, some insist. A proposal for a sufficient condition for treating another merely as a means might invoke a notion of actual consent. Suppose an agent is using another, the proposal might go; he is using her merely as a means if she has not consented to his use of her Nozick 30—31; Scanlon This simple proposal faces immediate difficulties.
To cite one, imagine that a gravely ill young man has arrived via ambulance at a hospital. We will also presuppose the two-level-model, i. At first glance and without respecting the immediate context, it seems as if Kant were saying that whichever x has value it does so because of the moral law. If value is endowed by moral legislation, the source of this legislation itself must have value; value is not brought about by something that has no value, says Kant.
And what has value is rational nature with its ability to legislate, and this is just what the ground-thesis says. This yields:. The key term in [G3] is determination of value.
Let us now turn to [G4]. Regardless of the elements that connect [G4a] with [G3], what [G4a] says is this:. Thus there are two possible readings, and they both make sense in a certain way. So as it stands, [G5] sums up what Kant says in [G4].
What determines all value has itself an unconditioned, incomparable value. Legislation determines all value. Therefore, legislation has an unconditioned, incomparable value. Which things obtain value by strength of the moral law? Given the basic elements of his ethical theory, two things come to mind first: actions and dispositions Gesinnungen.
But how should freedom as the property of a noumenally-good will, hence as a moral causality, not be understood as normative? And how could being an end in itself not be a normative fact, since such beings have absolute value which is a valuative fact? Footnote 24 But why so? According to the standard reading of the GMS, Kant understands autonomous beings as ends in themselves with dignity and value, and he claims that the existence of such beings is the ground of the CI.
The burden of proof is on those who propose the revisionist reading. But our analysis of the law-sentence — the basis for the revisionist reading — reveals that it does not only not contradict the ground-thesis; as a matter of fact, it corroborates it.
Many thanks to Richard Capobianco for correcting and polishing our English as well as to the anonymous reviewer for very valuable corrections. All simple page numbers in parenthesis without scribal abbreviation refer to the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals GMS , using the pagination of the so-called Akademie-Ausgabe. For a brief account of the standard reading, cf. Timmermann ed. Paton, The Categorical Imperative. Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten , Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, , pp.
On the other hand, Henry E. We cannot see how these two claims fit together. In our paper Elke E. Schmidt eds. For our purposes, it must suffice to single out a number of well-known authors and commentaries of the more recent literature; we shall mention, however, that most recently, Rocco Porcheddu, Der Zweck an sich selbst. GMS: ,2; ,6; ,28; ,13; ,27; ,22; ,8; ,16; ,4.
For that misunderstanding cf.
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