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Kant embraces the principle that it is wrong for us to treat others merely as means. This 'Mere Means Principle', as I refer to it, stems from one formulation of the categorical imperative, namely the Formula of Humanity: 'So act that you treat 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.'1 If an agent treats another merely as a means, claims Kant, then his action is morally impermissible. In contemporary Kantian ethics, the Mere Means Principle plays the role of a moral constraint: it limits what we may do, even in the service of promoting the overall good.
The Mere Means Principle allows of no exception, and it thus might fail to square with our considered moral views. Perhaps no matter how we specify the notion of treating others merely as means, we are able to imagine an extreme scenario in which treating them in this way will not seem to us to be wrong. For example, what if millions of people will die in a nuclear explosion unless, in order to prevent it, John fatally shoots an innocent person - someone who would survive the explosion and is begging for his life?2 In killing the innocent person, John would, many of us think, be treating him merely as a means. But we resist the conclusion that he would be acting wrongly.
In the end, philosophers attracted to the Mere Means Principle might be forced to revise it by making it non-absolute. They might argue, for example, that although we always have significant moral reason not to treat others merely as means, once we reach a certain threshold of good that can be promoted only if we do so, this reason gets overridden. Treating others merely as means is always wrong pro tanto, but, in (presumably rare) cases in which other, weightier, moral reasons apply, not wrong all things considered. Such a revision might allow philosophers to maintain something like the Mere Means Principle even in the face of extreme cases.
However problematic extreme cases might be for this principle, those of us inclined to defend it as...