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CONTEMPORARY KANT SCHOLARSHIP GENERALLY TAKES Kant's conception of humanity in his ethical writings to refer to beings with rational capacities.1 according to this interpretation, when Kant tells us in the Categorical Imperative's Formula of Humanity (FH) to "act so that you use humanity . . . always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means," we are to treat anyone with rational capacities this way.2 However, Richard Dean has recently revived an alternative interpretation that he traces to H. J. Paton.3 according to this interpretation, by 'humanity' Kant really means the good will, and, furthermore, Dean takes this interpretation to be the more defensible view within Kant's ethical system.
In addition, while Dean appears to hold a minority view among Kant scholars, 4 reconciling Kant's separate claims that the good will is the only unqualified good and that humanity is unconditionally valuable has been a tricky subject for several others. Samuel Kerstein has wondered how to render these claims consistent, 5 and in his review of Thomas Hill's Human Welfare and Moral Worth, Kerstein criticizes Hill for distinguishing between the good will and humanity without also adequately resolving that tension.6 while not explicitly identifying the good will with rational capacities, Paul Guyer seems to collapse the two when he writes that, in the transition from section I of Kant's Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals to section II, "all that is happening is that the intuitive conception of the good will is being replaced with the more abstract notion of rational being as an end in itself."7 Finally, while in many places Christine Korsgaard holds that humanity and the good will are two different things,8 she also writes that, "[o]n Kant's view there is only one thing that has what he calls unconditional value . . . and that is the power of rational choice (when the choices are made in a fully rational way, which is what characterizes the good will)." The parenthetical remark seems to commit her to the view that rational capacity has unconditional value only when it is actualized in the form of the good will.9
Thus, despite the appearance of near unanimity that humanity is different from the good will in Kant's ethics, in Kant scholarship,...