<Tr> <Td> "</Td> <Td> Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end . </Td> <Td>" </Td> </Tr> <Tr> <Td_colspan="3">--Immanuel Kant, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals </Td> </Tr> <P> Every rational action must set before itself not only a principle, but also an end . Most ends are of a subjective kind, because they need only be pursued if they are in line with some particular hypothetical imperative that a person may choose to adopt . For an end to be objective, it would be necessary that we categorically pursue it . </P> <P> The free will is the source of all rational action . But to treat it as a subjective end is to deny the possibility of freedom in general . Because the autonomous will is the one and only source of moral action, it would contradict the first formulation to claim that a person is merely a means to some other end, rather than always an end in themselves . </P>

Kant's second categorical imperative says that we should