ABSTRACT
Amid all the obscurities of Kant’s ethical theory, one intriguing idea stands out. This is that a supreme principle of morality can be worked out a priori, which dictates that rational beings must always be treated as ends in themselves. It is not wrong, according to Kant, to use rational beings as means to our ends, provided that we do not treat them as mere means, by coercing or manipulating them into courses of action to which they could not in principle consent. This principle can be known a priori precisely because to reject it would involve subverting the capacity for autonomous (i.e. moral) action in another person. No moral maxim can ever prescribe the subversion of moral deliberation in another agent.
