[Revised entry by Samuel Kerstein on October 20, 2023.
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography, notes.html]
Sometimes it is morally wrong to treat persons as means. When a person says that someone is treating him merely as a means, for example, he often implies that she is failing to abide by a moral norm. Ethically disapproving judgments that a person is “just using” or sometimes simply “using” another are common in everyday discourse (e.g., Goldman a Schmidt 2018). Authors appeal to the idea that research on human subjects (Levine 2007: 140; Van der Graaf and Van Delden 2012), management of employees…

Originally appeared on Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Read More