Kant on Intrinsic Worth
By Hannah Webb
2 minute read · Written August 22, 2025 · Published June 6, 2026
Kant's Argument
Kant posits that moral laws must be universal, not grounded in desires, feelings, or circumstances. We use reason to determine whether an action can hold across all situations. Putting this together, an action is only moral if it can be universalized (the categorical imperative).
Humans are rational, self-legislating beings, and morality applies universally to all rational beings, so moral actions must respect each person's rational capacity.
To treat a person merely as a means is to use their rational capacity as a tool for your own ends. However, that kind of action couldn't be universalized without contradiction, since it would treat autonomy as something to be overridden rather than something that grounds moral law itself.
Therefore, humans must always be treated as ends in themselves--beings with intrinsic worth and dignity that cannot be reduced, exchanged, or used up.
The Tension
What is dignity? For Kant, it is intrinsic worth grounded in our capacity for rational self-legislation, from which moral responsibility follows.
However, if this worth is truly intrinsic, why does that not feel like the starting point of experience, rather something I have to reason myself into? I find that the more immediate condition is questioning where to anchor my worth.
Like a mathematician uncovering principles already embedded in the natural world, Kant provides the logical and metaphysical scaffolding for intrinsic worth--but what he misses is answering the psychological, existential question: if dignity is intrinsic, why is our lived experience not one of existing self-respect but often of shame and self-doubt? This omission points to a gap in Kant's system: he grounds our worth rationally and cosmically, but not experientially. It remains a dissonance I continue to think about.
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