Sam in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
October 24, 2023
On treating persons as means.
New in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, a major revision of "Treating Persons as Means," by Sam Kerstein. An outline of the article is below.
Treating Persons as Means
Th[is] entry begins by focusing on the roots in Kant of discussion of treating persons merely as means. It then considers (morally neutral) notions of using another or treating him as a means, notions that are less straightforward than it might seem. The third section focuses on attempts to specify sufficient conditions for treating another merely as a means, some of which Kant himself suggests. According to Kant, to treat another merely as a means is to do something morally impermissible; it is to act wrongly. The next section examines challenges to this claim. Finally, the article considers accounts of when a person uses another, but not merely as a means.