respect for oneself as a person shoudl be at the very centre of moral theory

 Kant was the first major Western philosopher to put respect for persons, including oneself as a person, at the very center of moral theory, and his insistence that persons are ends in themselves with an absolute dignity who must always be respected has become a core ideal of modern humanism and political liberalism.

 In recent years many people have argued that moral respect ought also to be extended to things other than persons, such as nonhuman living things and the natural environment.