By this analysis of respect, we have made clear to ourselves that there is present here a phenomenon which in Kant's sense is not just any indiscriminate feeling which happens also to appear among other states transpiring in the empirical subject; rather, this feeling of respect is the true mode in which man's existence becomes manifest, not in the sense of a pure ascertainment or taking cognizance of, but in the sense that in respect I myself am—am acting. Respect for the law means eo ipso action. The manner of self-consciousness in the sense of respect already makes manifest a mode of the type of being of the person proper. Although Kant does not press directly in this direction, nevertheless the possibility is present in reality. For an understanding of this matter the basic formal structure of feeling in general must be borne in mind; having-feeling-for, self-feeling, and this self-feeling as a mode of becoming-self-manifest. Respect reveals the dignity before which and for which the self knows itself to be responsible. Only in responsibility does the self first reveal itself—the self not in a general sense as knowledge of an ego in general but as in each case mine, the ego as in each case the individual factical ego.
c) Kant's ontological disjunction of person and thing [Sache].
The ontological constitution of the person as an
end-in-itself
Although Kant does not raise his question in the way in which we do, we shall nevertheless formulate the question thus: Given that in the above described way the self is revealed ontically in the moral feeling of respect as being an ego, how is that self to be defined ontologically? Respect is the ontical access to itself of the factically existent ego proper. In this revelation of itself as a factically existent entity, the possibility must be given for determining the constitution of the being of this entity itself thus manifest. In other words, what is the ontological concept of the personalitas moralis, the moral person who is thus revealed in respect?
Although Kant does not explicitly pose this question, he in fact gives the answer to it in his Metaphysics of Morals. Metaphysics means ontology. Metaphysics of morals signifies the ontology of human existence. That Kant gives the answer in the ontology of human existence, or the metaphysics of morals, shows that he has an unclouded understanding of the methodological sense of the analysis of the person and thus also of the metaphysical question What is man?
Let us once more make clear to ourselves what is inherent in moral feeling: man's dignity, which exalts him insofar as he serves. In this dignity in unity with service, man is at once master and servant of himself. In respect, in acting ethically, man makes himself, as Kant declares in one