However, neither the love nor the respect we owe is a matter of feeling (or, is pathological, as Kant says), but is, rather, a duty to adopt a certain kind of maxim, or policy of action: the duty of love is the duty to make the ends of others my own, the duty of respect is the duty to not degrade others to the status of mere means to my ends (Kant 1779, 6: 449–450).
Yet one could easily reply that two persons of the same sex engaging in sexual union does not necessarily imply any sort of 'use' of the other as a mere means to one's own pleasure.
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).
At the same time, the fact that consequentialist impartiality permits the individual to be used as a mere means when doing so promotes the greater good (section 3.3)might indicate that consequentialism fails to take individuals seriously as patients.
The person should never be a mere means to an end, subordinated to the will and purposes of another.
Like others, it is trying to change the system from being a mere means of distributing messages to becoming a lure that brings together seekers of knowledge and collaborators.
That is, one's intention then is just to use a body (one's own or another's) as a mere means to the end of pleasure, and this detracts from personal integration.
And obviously the answer cannot be that one needs to give in order to receive; that would turn active love for one's friend into a mere means to the benefits received.
One serious objection raised against Kant's ethical theory is that in claiming that only rational beings are ends in themselves deserving of respect, it licenses treating all things which aren't persons as mere means to the ends of rational beings, and so it supports morally abhorrent attitudes of domination and exploitation toward all nonpersons and toward our natural environment.
The prohibition against commodifying life is usually attributed to Immanuel Kant 21 and is understood as the idea that life is commodified when persons are treated not as ends in themselves but as means to the ends of others, as mere means.
