¹ This claim originally derives from Hegel. Allison, Henry E., Idealism and Freedom: Essays on Kant's Theoretical and Practical Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 143CrossRefGoogle Scholar

² No claim is made here to their logical equivalence, rather it is a matter of pointing out what would follow if true. The fact of it or not is irrelevant to the argument presented here concerning the ‘respect’ formulation of the Categorical Imperative.

³ Also sometimes referred to as The Formula of Humanity as End in Itself. cf. Wood, Allen W., Kant's Ethical Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 18CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴ Foundation of the Metaphysics of Morals, Chapter II, AA 4:429. 9–12. Kant in fact refers to it as ‘Der praktische Imperativ’ AA 4:429.9 (The practical imperative …).

⁵ I have slightly modified the rendition of this from the Paton translation consulted, by changing ‘simply’ to ‘merely’. Kant, Immanuel, Groundwork of the Metaphysic, Trans Paton, H. J. (London: Harper & Row, 1964)Google Scholar.

⁶ It might be thought that the importance of the notion of hypothetical acts in relation to the second formulation of the Categorical Imperative, insofar as it exists as it should in the relations between people, has been abundantly explored by others writing on Kantian ethics. This appears not to be the case at all as indicated by a sample of some of the most prominent writers. O'Neill, Onora, Constructions of Reason: Explorations of Kant's practical philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989)Google Scholar, is, among others, representative of this. O'Neill says ‘Agency must be not merely (negatively) respected but (positively) fostered …’ op. cit., 140. While there is talk here of positive and negative duties or maxims, there is no talk of hypothetical duties and the acts they imply. Similarly, Wood, Allen W., Kant's Ethical Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 139–141 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and 147–150, talks of positively having to sympathise with others, and negatively a duty not to commit suicide, but there is no reference to hypothetical acts, let alone to the vast array of them that may more or less probably become actual. There is merely mention of actual positive (helping) acts and negative (not hindering) acts, and that more than the latter is a duty in our relations to others. But this is not the same as hypothetical acts, nor can they be reduced to actual positive and negative acts. Similarly with Korsgaard, Christine M., The Sources of Normativity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The closest one gets is Sullivan, Roger J., Immanuel Kant's Moral Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar who on 70 identifies, I believe correctly, ‘respect as an attitude (and the conduct displaying that attitude)’. However, he fails to make the connection between respect, attitude and hypothetical acts, rather than merely a connection to actual conduct that may or may not be taking place in any given relation between people. This leaves us with the puzzle: when there is no conduct displaying the attitude, has the appropriate attitude ceased to exist? Surely not necessarily; indeed often in fact not at all. The appropriate attitude, that of respect, prevails because of the way it is embodied in hypothetical acts that would display it.

⁷ Roger J. Sullivan, ibid., 70.

⁸ A setting out of this thought might be as follows. ‘The requirement never to treat another merely as a means is hard to satisfy in practice. Surely when I take a bus or order a meal I treat the driver or the waiter as a means: what it would be also to treat them as ends in themselves is unclear. Indeed, even apart from cases where the contracts between people are too slight or too distorted by the roles being played for Kant's requirement to be met straightforwardly, it is none too clear what it is to treat someone as an end in himself.’ Sorell, Tom, Moral Theory and Capital Punishment (Oxford: Blackwell/The Open University, 1987), 69Google Scholar.

⁹ Brilliantly clear exegesis is to be found in Sullivan, Roger J., An Introduction to Kant's Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰ I make no strong claim about such a will being rational. Indeed, it may be said that ‘rational will’ is a tautology. This is not the place to defend this claim, but it may be argued that having the capacity to will at all must include rationality, in the sense that plans and the actions that follow may be judged normatively – it may be said that they should or should not have happened, that they were correct or incorrect, as opposed to simply things that happen or do not happen as non-rational events. What is crucial here is that what follows is the will of the individual, in that it is his free choice. Whether that needs to be tied in separately to rationality is another matter. It might be noted however, in case this position is seen as moving too far away from the letter and even the spirit of Kant, that the Categorical Imperative ends up, it may be argued, in separating all entities in the world into persons and things: the rational entities (capable of willing) and the non-rational entities (incapable of willing). Only persons fall into the former class. It is the case of course that the Categorical Imperative applies to any being having humanity – that is to any person – irrespective of whether its will is good or evil. See Allen W. Wood, ibid., 120f.

¹¹ Foundation of Metaphysic of Morals, Chapter II, AA 4:429.20–23.

¹² Ibid ., Chapter II, AA 4:429.23

¹³ One is reminded of the heartfelt remark of an ex-prisoner-of-war held in a Japanese camp, who on release commented: ‘I was a man again: I could say “no”’. In the camp he was not treated as a person, but as a virtual thing. What this meant was that his will counted for nothing in how others treated him. The Categorical Imperative principle was not in play.

Similarly, the Nazi Extermination Camp survivor Primo Levi showed how there was there was no ‘why’ in Auschwitz, only was. ‘Driven by thirst, I eyed a fine icicle outside the window, within hand's reach. I opened the window and broke off the icicle, but at once a large, heavy guard prowling outside brutally snatched it away from me. “Warum?” I asked in my poor German. “Hier ist kein warum” [Here there is no why], he replied, pushing me inside with a shove.’ Levi, Primo, Survival in Auschwitz (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 28Google Scholar. The requirement and request for normative justification had ceased to exist in the way people were treated. They were just things for whom (or perhaps, ‘for which’) no normative justification for what happened to them was required nor could be demanded. Persons had become treated as things.

Emmanuel Levinas records that when he was a German POW (he had the good luck to be treated as a Frenchman rather than a Jew) he was, with several others, cutting down trees in the middle of the forest. Passers-by treated them as part of the landscape, and the only one to treat them as human was a big dog that greeted them when they came back to camp, for whom they were clearly men. When the guards eventually chased the dog off, he records that ‘This dog was the last Kantian in Germany, without the brain needed to universalise maxims and drives.’ Levinas, Emmanuel, ‘The Name of a Dog, or Natural Rights’. Difficult Freedom: Essays on Judaism, trans Hand, Seán (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

Stephen Darwall writes, ‘When someone uses your foot as his footrest, this is an injury, not just to your foot, but to your person. It is a failure to respect your dignity as someone who may not be so treated and who can insist on it. Adam Smith observes [ Smith, Adam, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (originally published, 1759), Macfie, A. L. and Raphael, D. D., eds. (Indianapolis: LibertyClassics, 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar] that we are apt to resent disrespect for our person as much as or more than physical or other psychic injury. “What enrages us against the man who injures or insults us,” Smith writes “is the little account he seems to make of us” – “that absurd self-love [and we might add: self-conceit], by which he seems to imagine, that other people may be sacrificed at any time, to his conveniency.”’ Stephen Darwall, ‘Respect and the Second-Person Standpoint’ Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, November 2004, Volume 78, Issue 2, 54.

And Peter Strawson says, ‘We should consider also in much of our behaviour the benefit or injury resides mainly or entirely in the manifestation of the attitude itself.’ Strawson, P. F., Freedom and Resentment, (London: Routledge, 2008), 76CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁴ The proportion of actual acts to hypothetical acts and their characteristics required by the Categorical Imperative will vary according the to the depth and intimacy of the relationship with others. If I buy something in a shop say, very little in the way of actual treatment of the shop assistant is required by the Categorical Imperative apart from normal politeness, while a considerable amount of hypothetical acts remain – should the shop assistant be attacked I might defend her; should she have to leave on a genuine emergency, I may let her go without undue protest, and in neither case would I irately demand she complete my order. If however one is dealing with the relation between family members or between friends, the balance as well as the content of actual and hypothetical acts will be different and be partly dependent on the expectations that are part and parcel of those relationships for whatever reason – in this case far more in the way of actual acts, as well as perhaps further hypothetical acts and of a different sort, may rightly be morally expected. On this see Jeske, Diane, Rationality and Moral Theory: How Intimacy Generates Reasons (London: Routledge, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.