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Kant's Necessary Evil

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Kant felt very strongly about how people were supposed to act. According to the Categorical Imperative, he said, “Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end and never as a means only” (Rachels, 139). Since humans are so valuable, we need to treat them “as an end”. This means you need to treat them well; respect their rights, avoid harming them, and promote their welfare. To treat people “as an end” according to Kant is, “as beings who (can) contain in themselves the end of the very same action” (Rachels, 139). When you treat people like a means, you are not treating them with respect. You are using them. When you treat people like a means, you manipulate them and use them to achieve your goals. If you were going to treat people as a means would an example would include being friends with someone, so you can get a job at a store that her family owns. This example shows that friend A had no intention of becoming friends with friend B. She lied and pretended to be nice, so she …show more content…

We would all like to believe that for the most part, we treat people as ends. However, sometimes your actions, even if you do not realize it, you are using people. Let’s take for example stated early, how the person told her friend that she would not repay her. If the friend gives her the money, you are using her as a means to get the money. Although you have good intentions to tell your friend the truth, you still are using her in a way. Examples like this happen all the time. To support your family, get into college, and other life events, you have to use people. For example, aren’t you using the people who wrote you recommendation letters? You are being extremely nice to them and get to know them in hopes that they will convince a committee to accept you into the school. Yes, you may like your recommender as person, but during that time, you

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