“A man does what he must – despite personal consequences, despite obstacles, dangers and pressures – and this is the basis of human morality.” John F. Kennedy, the thirty-fifth president of the United States, wrote in his book Profiles of Courage. This quote embodies what Kennedy believed promoted the best growth, greatest good, and overall just state of humanity. The idea that a man should act on what is best for society developed a following that not only included the great Robert F. Kennedy, but also served as a foundation of belief for the philosopher Immanual Kant. Kant, in his 1785 article, “Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals,” first developed some of the ways in which man should fine-tune his moral compass through capacities such as reason. According to Kant, both humans and animals worked according to laws – although, unlike animals, humans are able to use reason to develop their own set of laws to follow. For Kant, reason was the capacity that separated man from the animal and allowed man to have will. The foundations on which a person develops his will and what defines the morality of each being are the important issue for Kant, who argued that morality is formed through experience and that each person should develop his own morality. The problem with a self-developed moral system, as Kant explains, is the need for a standard set of laws that society can agree to follow. The solution offered by Kant is a system based on imperatives: the hypothetical imperative system and the categorical imperative system. The main difference in both systems produces an explanation of why a common system is needed. The categorical imperatives, as Kant defines them, positioned u...... in the center of the paper ......m further forward than on the back, would we be happy to live in such a world? The answer is no. Kant develops his system of categorical imperatives with guidelines and standards throughout the article and argues that people can only be judged by their intentions, not the results of their actions. Kant says that if a person intends to do good, then he should be considered a good person and that the motivation must be judged to be good on a moral level. Kant also believes that humans should not treat other humans as means, largely due to the immorality and impracticality of doing so. As in the case of his argument about the duty of human beings to promote and spread happiness, Kant states that if the world moved forward in a way in which everyone used each other to achieve their own ends, it would be highly impractical and would simply extend the amount of work needed to achieve one's goal.