Reason and End

If Pure Reason is, fundamentally, the process of unifying a multiplicity, then it entails no concept of 'end', which is, as Spinoza argues, the product of a concept of Reason as fundamentally teleological.  Likewise, it entails no concept of 'end in itself'.  Now, in a variety of places, Kant espouses, either implicitly or explicitly, a concept of Pure Reason as a principle of unification.  On that basis, contrary to what he frequently asserts elsewhere, Reason does not have or set ends, and neither Reason nor a rational being is an end in itself. Rather, as admirable as is his declaration that humans should never be treated as mere means, it is an empirical principle.