“So act that you use 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.”Immanuel Kant · Întemeierea metafizicii moravurilor · 1785 · Secțiunea a II-a, AA 4:429
A person is never a tool: every human remains an end, even when you rely on them.
The second formula of the categorical imperative forbids reducing a person to her useful function. The moral mechanism: rational beings are sources of value, not objects of value, so they cannot be consumed for someone else's purposes. Fraud is the typical case: the swindler uses the victim's trust purely as an instrument. But the formula cuts finer: an employee treated only as a resource, or pointless self-sacrifice, violates the same principle.
Kant's formula has a less noticed consequence: it applies to how you treat yourself. You are not only forbidden to exploit others; you may not sell yourself either. A simple example: someone who accepts any humiliation at work just for the paycheck, without any limit, uses their own life as a resource. Dignity cannot be bargained away, because it has no price — only respect. The practical question becomes: where does legitimate self-sacrifice end and self-betrayal begin?
Why it matters The sentence is a filter for daily life, from how we treat colleagues to how we design technologies for people.