An undergraduate engineering student, Ann, wants to secure a prestigious internship with company C in the summer before her senior year. Ann...

One would be safe to conclude that Immanuel Kant would have disapproved of Ann’s actions. By meticulously cultivating a relationship with Beth over a period of time solely for the purpose of securing an important internship and then, upon failing to secure said internship, precipitously and rudely terminating all vestiges of that relationship, Ann violated Kant’s “categorical imperative” regarding human relations.

In his Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant addresses the definition of...

One would be safe to conclude that Immanuel Kant would have disapproved of Ann’s actions. By meticulously cultivating a relationship with Beth over a period of time solely for the purpose of securing an important internship and then, upon failing to secure said internship, precipitously and rudely terminating all vestiges of that relationship, Ann violated Kant’s “categorical imperative” regarding human relations.

In his Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant addresses the definition of morality and how it should, optimally, constitute the rules under which humans interact. In one of this treatise’s most frequently cited rules, the late German philosopher wrote, “Act so that you use humanity, as much in your own person as in the person of every other, always at the same time as end and never merely as means.” Kant was, in a sense, postulating a variation of the oft-cited “Golden Rule” or “ethic of reciprocity,” which can be traced to antiquity and which commands one to love his or her neighbor as he or she loves himself or herself. The “Golden Rule’s” most well-known variation is in the New Testament, Matthew 7-12: “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.” Kant, of course, had a complicated view of religion. He believed it in direct conflict with scientific reasoning but did not discount the presence of God in his life. His philosophy of ethics, however, represented a continuation of the “Golden Rule.”

In summary, Ann has deliberately exploited another human being for her own purpose and then further betrayed that human being’s trust by cavalierly cutting off all communications between Beth and herself. There is no question that Kant would disprove of Ann’s highly-questionable sense of morality. He would probably repeat another of his more frequently cited comments: “If man makes himself a worm, he must not complain when he is trodden upon.” Ann has violated the categorical imperative and has invited some form of retribution upon herself, whatever form that retribution might take.