Kant wants us to treat everyone as a means to an end, not just as a means. I think it’s reasonable to infer that this means we should try to persuade people into doing what we think they should do, give them reasons we hope will convince them, rather than simply tricking them or forcing them. This respects their autonomy rather than subjecting them to heteronomy. This is all the more pressing because Kant is insistent that imitation has no place whatsoever in ethics and in teaching ethics; in fact, it just gets in the way, it clouds the issue. Even when teaching children, we shouldn’t use examples from every day life, we should just use ‘pure’ reason.
This mean that we could only ever treat some mentally handicapped people as means, we could never fully respect them. And this is only one good reason why Kant’s ethical theory is a bit bonkers. There are some people who do not understand their own good as well as we do, and for their own good we have to cajole, entice, command or otherwise lead them into it, hopefully so that it becomes a habit for them. But we could never explain to the people in question why this is for their good (and yes, that also means we have the majority of the power in the situation. That’s not bad in itself, it’s simply the fact of the matter). And so we could never treat them as ends on Kant’s definition. But that doesn’t mean we’re not treating them as ends, that we’re simply using them somehow. It is just that there is more to people than thinking in a certain way. That is why ethical theories should include a conception of the good life and a richer picture of the human in its context. That’s why Charles Taylor is on the ball.
Sometimes the best way to do lead people to their good is to model it. Which means that imitation has a central place in ethics! If only phenomenology had been invented in the eighteenth century.
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