Dr. King on "utilitarian Love"

The great philosopher Immanuel Kant said, in what he called his categorical imperative, that "every man should so live that he treats every other man as an end and never as a means." Kant had something there because the minute you use a person as a means, you depersonalize that person, and that person becomes merely an object. This is what we do for things. We use things, and whenever you use somebody you, in your own mind, thingify that person. A great Jewish philosopher by the name of Martin Buber wrote a book entitled I and Thou, and he says in that book that life at its best is always on the level of "I and Thou," and whenever it degenerates to the level of "I and It," it becomes dangerous and terrible. Whenever we treat people not as thous, whenever we treat a man not as a him, a woman not as a her, we make them a thing, and this is the tragedy...

- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., from a sermon on "Levels of Love" given September 16, 1962 at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Ga.,