An ethical imperative for technical communicators

Utilitarianism, the ethical system of free-market capitalism, is limited in that it sanctions contingencies. Immanuel Kant´s second formulation of the categorical imperative-to treat ourselves and others not merely as means but also as ends-offers a clear and powerful ethic that enables technical communicators to subordinate contingencies to an understanding of people as rational entities possessed of full human dignity. John Rawls´s (1971) model of an ideal society derives from and extends Kant´s thinking on the primacy of human dignity in an ethical system