Abstract

The idea that respect for persons comprises the core of morality has long been associated with Kant and the ethics of the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. In particular, the second formulation of the categorical imperative , the Formula of Humanity as an End-in-itself – ‘So act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means’ – is often glossed as enjoining us to respect persons as such. On what I think may fairly be called the received view, the injunction to respect persons as such is thus, for Kant, co-extensive with morality itself