Samuel Kerstein

At the core of Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals lies his ‘derivation’ of the categorical imperative: his attempt to establish that, if there is a supreme principle of morality, then it is this imperative. Kant's argument for this claim is one of the most puzzling in his corpus. The received view, championed by Aune and Allison, is that there is a fundamental gap in the argument, which Kant elides by means of a simple but deadly confusion, thus robbing the argument of all validity. We will here contest the received view, as well as Korsgaard's alternative interpretation of the argument. In place of these positions we will offer a reconstruction of the derivation which reveals its coherence and force. We will show that it illuminates some interesting grounds for rejecting certain candidates, including a utilitarian principle, for status as the supreme principle of morality. While certainly not free of all defects, the argument will be shown to be far more powerful and interesting than it has commonly been held to be

Suppose that a young athlete has just become quadriplegic. He expects to live several more decades, but out of self‐interest he autonomously chooses to engage in physician‐assisted suicide (PAS) or voluntary active euthanasia (VAE). Some of us are unsure whether he or his physician would be acting rightly in ending his life. One basis for such doubt is the notion that persons have dignity in a Kantian sense. This paper probes responses that David Velleman and Frances Kamm have suggested to the question of whether participating in PAS or VAE to benefit oneself, as the young man might, respects the dignity of persons, specified in an orthodox Kantian way. Velleman claims that it does not, while Kamm insists that, in certain circumstances, it does. I argue against Kamm's position. I go on to contend that while orthodox Kantianism might provide a basis for moral concern regarding the case of the young quadriplegic, it suffers from two serious shortcomings. First, it implies that terminally ill patients are wrong to request VAE or engage in PAS to avoid intense suffering, at least when this suffering has not yet overwhelmed their reason. Second, orthodox Kantianism implies that it is wrong for physicians to withdraw such patients from life‐sustaining treatments, even if they request it. To remedy these shortcomings, I sketch an unorthodox Kantian account of respect for the dignity of persons. This account promises to capture the idea that it would be morally problematic for doctors to help the young quadriplegic to die, but to avoid the shortcomings of an orthodox Kantian account.

In the Formula of Humanity, Kant embraces the principle that it is wrong for us to treat others merely as means. For contemporary Kantian ethicists, this 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. But substantive interpretations of the principle generate implausible results in relatively ordinary cases. On one interpretation, for example, you treat your opponent in a tennis tournament merely as a means and thus wrongly when you try, through defeating him, to win first place. The article aims to develop a reconstruction of the Mere Means Principle that has more plausible implications than do rival reconstructions. It sets out a sufficient condition for an agent's treating another merely as a means. This condition is intended to be Kantian, but not necessarily one that Kant endorses.