Kant was quite a writer, and yea, an innovator for his time, but the idea that you should act in a way that, if everyone did it, would turn out okay was radical in his time, and still not generally accepted.<p>If anything, your categorical imperative is another argument that people don&#x27;t agree on what is right across time and culture.<p>In fact, considering his socioeconomic position at the time, I highly doubt he lived anything like a life that could be lived by everyone.  We talk about economic inequality now... but in his day the difference between the rich and the poor wasn&#x27;t the number of dollars, it was who had access to food and who did not, which I personally think is a much greater inequality than any amount of dollars.<p>&gt; once you &#x27;other&#x27; someone, you can justify anything including torture, death camps.<p>The point here is that you can go back and rationalize people&#x27;s actions like that, but to say those people are acting on the same ethical principles that we are makes a mockery of our modern ethics.  If you have rules about what you can and can&#x27;t do to a person, as we do, and you re-define person to not include a bunch of humanity, you are no longer following the same ethics we are following now.