Immanuel Kant believes that we act wrongly when we treat people simply as a means and not as an end in themselves. According to Kant “every rational being exists as an end in itself, not simply as a means which this or that will can use at its discretion”. Each person is a rational being who can make his own choices. This makes everyone intrinsically valuable because everyone has their own free will. Consequently, people should not be used simply as tools for others to achieve their goals. People are worth their will and their intellect; they are not to be used just to serve other people. To treat someone as an end in themselves, we need to ensure they fully understand the circumstances surrounding any agreement. The person must be able to make an informed decision. Therefore it is morally wrong to treat someone as a mere means because it violates their intrinsic value. The morally correct action would be to treat the person as an end in themselves and tell the truth to allow them to make their own decisions. As a general rule, "act so as to use humanity, whether in your own person or in that of anyone else, always and at the same time as an end, never simply as a means." Onora O' Neill is an eminent scholar of Kant's moral philosophy. For many people, Kant's moral theories are extremely complicated and difficult to understand. This led O' Neill to write A Simplified Account of Kant's Ethics. In this essay he attempts to provide readers with a simplified account of Kant's moral ethics. According to O'Neill, to use someone simply as a means is to "involve them in a scheme of action to which they could not in principle consent." In this interpretation of Kant's way... middle of paper... in surprise then it is morally wrong to force him to participate by deception. The intrinsic value of his free will is ignored to forcibly surprise him. To contrast the surprise party example, Kant might respond by asking, “what if the person doesn't want a surprise party? What if the person had other plans and the surprise party violated them? Because the person was manipulated and was unable to make an informed decision, they are used as a mere means to achieve someone else's goal. Despite the individual's well-intentioned behavior, it is still not morally permissible to use a person as a mere means to an end. Therefore the previous counterexample is not an effective counter to Kant's thesis. It is still morally wrong to use anyone as a mere means, regardless of any altruistic nature and not as an end in itself.