The preceding definition of freedom is negative and therefore
unfruitful for the discovery of its essence, but it leads to a
positive conception which is so much the more full and fruitful.
Since the conception of causality involves that of laws, according
to which, by something that we call cause, something else, namely
the effect, must be produced; hence, although freedom is not a
property of the will depending on physical laws, yet it is not for
that reason lawless; on the contrary it must be a causality acting
according to immutable laws, but of a peculiar kind; otherwise a
free will would be an absurdity. Physical necessity is a heteronomy of
the efficient causes, for every effect is possible only according to
this law, that something else determines the efficient cause to
exert its causality. What else then can freedom of the will be but
autonomy, that is, the property of the will to be a law to itself? But
the proposition: "The will is in every action a law to itself," only
expresses the principle: "To act on no other maxim than that which can
also have as an object itself as a universal law.
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