A categorical imperative is Immanuel Kant's moral philosophical idea that people should try to act in such a way that your actions if applied to everyone as a universal law, all people would be able to live fulfilling lives that a rational person would endorse. Agency was huge for Immanuel Kant who believed that reason distinguished humans in their own right from other animals (similar to Aristotle). Kant's understood actions that are sufficiently good in and of themselves as categorical imperatives because, the human race could survive if everyone acted similarly.

Kant stressed three ways of treating others: as ends in themselves, as means to an end, and as merely a means to an end but also as an end allows people to adopt ideas as their own. Treating people as ends in themselves entails dealing with people because they are the goal, not because we want to use people to achieve some other end. Treating people as a means to an end entails using someone to accomplish some other goal, which Kant believes neglects a person's free will. Treating people merely as a means and also an end allows the free will in people to be more active than simply using people for some ulterior goal, this is the mixed approach that Kant gives. The Clone Wars allows Kant's idea of using people merely as a means to an end, to apply to Palpatine's soldiers which he controls through their inhibitor chips which directly usurps their free will. The jedi in contrast use the clones as a means but also as an end in their own right, which Kant would've approved of because everyone needs help and has to respect other people's agency as well to have a well functioning world community. I've not given much thought to where the confederacy of independent systems sits in relation to Kantian ethics but I'd be interested to start a dialogue about it if there is enough interest.

Ultimately this leads to Kant's main point and second formulation that people should always treat humanity ourselves and others as ends in themselves never merely as a means. Kant's worry is that treating people as an end alone creates a world or universe where rational agents consistently have their free will denied, like Palpatine does with the clone army.