An Ethical Imperative for Technical Communicators

Of the many recent studies linking technical communication and ethics, few present an ethical position in sufficient detail to make its rationale clear. This paper argues that utilitarianism, the ethical system of free-market capitalism, is limited in that it sanctions contingencies. 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 persons as rational entities possessed of full human dignity. John Rawls’s model of an ideal society derives from and extends Kant’s thinking on the primacy of human dignity in an ethical system.