Application of the Never As a Means Only Form to the Fourth Example

Application of the Never As a Means Only Form to the Fourth Example: Prosperous and Those in Distress

Never as a Means Only Form: "Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of another, always at the same time as an end and never simply as a means" (Kant in Solomon and Martin, 298).

Each human is an end in him/herself. Each human seeks the end of happiness. Not to help those in distress treats other humans as things, not as ends in themselves:

Now humanity might indeed subsist if nobody contributed anything to the happiness of others ..... But this, after all, would harmonize only negatively and not positively with humanity as an end in itself, if everyone does not also strive as much as he can, to further the ends of others. For the ends of any subject who is an end in himself must as far as possible be my ends also, if that conception of an end in itself is to have its full effect in me. (Kant in Solomon and Martin, p. 299).

Meritorious (Imperfect) Duty to Others

Immanuel Kant, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals. 1785. Excerpts in Morality and the Good Life: An Introduction to Ethics through the Classical Sources. 4th ed. Eds. Robert C. Solomon and Clancy W. Martin. Trans. James W. Ellington. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2004. 262-311.