Quote and explain both formulations of Kant's Categorical Imperative from his essay. Provide an example of an action that you feel would pass the first formulation, but would fail the second. Clearly explain what the action is and how exactly it does so, on both accounts.
The first formulation of Kant's Categorical Imperative holds that individuals, desiring to act ethically, should only act if and only if one can rationally act in such a way that the maxim determining that action can be held as universal law. To simplify, ethical decisions derive from principles that are held constant and universal. Applying this thinking to an example illustrates what Kant means. Take, for instance, a situation wherein you, an individual, must kill another innocent individual who is blocking a narrow road in order to save five others. Because it is wrong to kill an innocent person under other circumstances (such as simply occupying the same room as said innocent person), it would not be ethically permissible to the kill the innocent individual in order to save five other people. By the first formulation of the Categorical Imperative and the principle that ethics must be universal, one cannot contradict those principles without instead establishing that it is universally ethically permissible to kill an innocent person. By the first formulation, there can be no contradiction.
The second formulation of Kant's Categorical Imperative is that humans, to act ethically, must act in a way so as to never treat other human beings as a means to an end. To expand more and connect with the first formulation, the second formulation can be thought of as what is called a perfect duty. In the first formulation, perfect duty is a duty that must always be carried out exactly. bearing that in mind, the second formulation describes a perfect duty of humans not to abuse others as a means to an end.
An action that would be able to pass the test of the first formulation of the Categorical Imperative but would fail the second formulation is refusing to tell a lie to save someone's life. Suppose you are harboring an alien that your government is trying to hunt down and kill; military forces knock at your door, questioning you on the whereabouts of the alien. If you refuse to answer or they catch you in a lie, you could be arrested and possibly executed. You could lie and save the alien's life, but that would violate the first formulation of the Categorical Imperative by violating the maxim "do not lie." The universal law is that it is always wrong to lie. In order to pass the first Categorical Imperative, you tell the truth. Telling the truth, however, would result in the death of the alien, using that alien (in this scenario, equivalent in worth to a human, as they are sentient) as a means to an end (sparing your life from execution for treason or from general legal troubles if the death penalty is not practiced). Even though telling the truth of this hypothetical alien's whereabouts is the ethical thing to do by the first formulation of the Categorical Imperative, it violates the second formulation of the Categorical Imperative by reducing its worth to being a mere means to an end.
Situations such as there are problematic for the Categorical Imperative and Kantian ethics because Kant held that all formulations of the Categorical Imperative meant the same thing and were essentialyl the same. If an action can be ethically correct by one formulation and ethically wrong by another, serious questions are raised as to the efficacy of this ethics system or to the ethics of certain behaviors. In such situations, humans must wonder what the solutions would be that could satisfy all formulations.