Kant insists we treat others—and ourselves—as ends, never merely as means: autonomous agents deserving respect and reason.
Persuasion must honor rationality, not manipulate it. To treat the moral agent (individual will) as an end, not merely a means to be bent to your will.
Yet, this moral vision rests on an assumption: that humans are rational. Egoists and emotivists reject this, seeing action as rooted not in duty (principle), but in desire.
Morality, then, becomes a choice—an aspiration rather than a given. Kant’s ethic remains noble, but perhaps aspirational, revealing the disjunction between how we should act and why we do.