The One Rule for Life

A long, plain-language tour of Immanuel Kant — the hermit who never left Königsberg yet, Manson argues, gave us one of the most durable rules for moral life. The piece walks through hypothetical vs. categorical imperatives, the famous formulation "act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law," and the humanity formulation: treat people, including yourself, always as ends and never merely as means. Manson applies it to lying, suicide, business ethics, and modern self-help.