The phrase "a mere instrument for" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to describe something that serves only as a tool or means to achieve a particular end, often implying a lack of significance or value beyond that function.
Example: "In this project, the software is viewed as a mere instrument for enhancing productivity, rather than a solution in itself."
Alternatives: "a simple tool for" or "just a means to".
She will be keen to demonstrate she is not a mere instrument of her creator, charged with keeping the presidential seat warm for his return in 2014, as critics allege.
Conceptual self-reflection reveals that thought arises from the very corporeal needs and desires that get forgotten when thought becomes a mere instrument of human self-preservation.
It seems more likely that someday it will be Aixa Hevia who will shed her chameleon skin to change her color in turn, to the dictates of the next power for whom she wants to behave as a mere instrument.
Shrage contests the Kantian notion that sex is morally problematic because it involves using another as a mere instrument (except in a few special contexts).
Institutions and organizations, even the Communist Party itself, had been eviscerated and had become mere instruments for carrying out his will.
Pornography, by its very nature, requires that women be subordinate to men and mere instruments for the fulfillment of male fantasies" (Longino 1980, 45).
It is not that logical truths do not say anything because they are mere instruments for some sort of extrinsically useful manipulation; rather, they "show" the "logical properties" that the world has independently of our decisions (1921, 6.12, 6.13).
Allen Buchanan argues that exploitation occurs "whenever persons are harmfully utilized as mere instruments for private gain," and adds that this could apply to business transactions between two affluent bankers—"Each harmfully utilizes the other as a mere means to his own advantage" (Buchanan, 1984, 44).
Locke said we were obliged to help other human beings when one's own survival was not in competition, Kant called on us to treat people as ends-in-themselves rather than as mere instruments for one's self-interest, and Mill based his vigorous defense of individual rights on the broader social benefits of liberty.
The loved person loses what is special to her as a human being, her humanity, and is reduced to a thing, a mere sexual instrument.
