How Reasons-Focused Is the Categorical Imperative?

Abstract

AbstractAccording to Pauline Kleingeld’s account of Kant’s prohibition on using others merely as means, A uses B merely as a means if and only if (1) A uses B as a means in the service of realizing her ends, (2) without, as a matter of moral principle, making this use conditional on B’s consent, where (3) by “consent” is meant B’s genuine actual consent to being used, in a particular manner, as a means to A’s end. I suggest that there are two readings of what I refer to as her account’s “double reasons-focus”: whether A uses B merely as a means is either partly or fully determined by A’s reasons (moderate or radical reasons-focus in the criterion sense) and A’s reasons are either part of what the prohibition assesses or the only thing it assesses (moderate or radical reasons-focus in the object-of-assessment sense). I then argue that while it is unusual to interpret Kant’s prohibition as radically reasons-focused in both these senses, doing so is far from unmotivated and might constitute a fruitful move in the debate on the Categorical Imperative. I conclude by showing that this move would allow Kleingeld to dismiss what might otherwise seem like a problem for her account, namely that it cannot accommodate the possibility of non-instrumentalizing violations of perfect duty.