Exposition of the Cosmological Idea of Freedom in harmony
with the Universal Law of Natural Necessity.
I have thought it advisable to lay before the reader at first merely
a sk&ch of the solution of this transcendental problem, in order to
enable him to form with greater ease a clear conception of the
course which reason must adopt in the solution. I shall now proceed to
exhibit the several momenta of this solution, and to consider them
in their order.
The natural law that everything which happens must have a cause,
that the causality of this cause, that is, the action of
the cause
(which cannot always have existed, but must be itself an
event, for it
precedes in time some effect which it has originated), must have
itself a phenomenal cause, by which it is determined and, and,
consequently, all events are empirically determined in an order of
nature— this law, I say, which lies at the foundation of the
possibility of experience, and of a connected system of phenomena or
nature is a law of the understanding, from which no departure, and
to which no exception, can be admitted. For to except even a single
phenomenon from its operation is to exclude it from the sphere of
possible experience and thus to admit it to be a mere fiction of
thought or phantom of the brain.
Thus we are obliged to acknowledge the existence of a chain of
causes, in which, however, absolute totality cannot be found. But we
need not detain ourselves with this question, for it has already
been sufficiently answered in our discussion of the antinomies into
which reason falls, when it attempts to reach the unconditioned in the
series of phenomena. If we permit ourselves to be deceived by the
illusion of transcendental idealism, we shall find that neither nature
nor freedom exists. Now the question is: "Whether, admitting the
existence of natural necessity in the world of phenomena, it is
possible to consider an effect as at the same time an effect of nature
and an effect of freedom— or, whether these two modes of causality are
contradictory and incompatible?"
No phenomenal cause can absolutely and of itself begin a series.
Every action, in so far as it is productive of an event, is itself
an event or occurrence, and presupposes another preceding state, in
which its cause existed. Thus everything that happens is but a
continuation of a series, and an absolute beginning is impossible in
the sensuous world. The actions of natural causes are, accordingly,
themselves effects, and presuppose causes preceding them in time. A
primal action — an action which forms an absolute beginning, is beyond the
causal power of phenomena.
Now, is it absolutely necessary that, granting that all effects
are phenomena, the causality of the cause of these effects must also
be a phenomenon and belong to the empirical world? Is it not rather
possible that, although every effect in the phenomenal world must be
connected with an empirical cause, according to the universal law of
nature, this empirical
causality may be itself the effect of a
non—empirical and intelligible causality— its connection with
natural causes remaining nevertheless intact? Such a causality would
be considered, in reference to phenomena, as the primal action of a
cause, which is in so far, therefore, not phenomenal, but, by reason
of this faculty or power, intelligible; although it must, at the
same time, as a link in the chain of nature, be regarded as
belonging to the sensuous world.
A belief in the reciprocal causality of phenomena is necessary, if
we are required to look for and to present the natural conditions of
natural events, that is to say, their causes. This being admitted as
unexceptionably valid, the requirements of the understanding, which
recognizes nothing but nature in the region of phenomena, are
satisfied, and our physical explanations of physical phenomena may
proceed in their regular course, without hindrance and without
opposition. But it is no stumbling—block in the way, even assuming the
idea to be a pure fiction, to admit that there are some natural causes
in the possession of a faculty which is not empirical, but
intelligible, inasmuch as it is not determined to action by
empirical conditions, but purely and solely upon grounds brought
forward by the understanding— this action being still, when the
cause is phenomenized, in perfect accordance with the laws of
empirical causality. Thus the acting subject, as a causal
phenomenon, would continue to preserve a complete connection with
nature and natural conditions; and the phenomenon only of the
subject (with all its phenomenal causality) would contain certain
conditions, which, if we ascend from the empirical to the
transcendental object, must necessarily be regarded as intelligible.
For, if we attend, in our inquiries with regard to causes in the world
of phenomena, to the directions of nature alone, we need not trouble
ourselves about the relation in which the transcendental subject,
which is completely unknown to us, stands to these phenomena and their
connection in nature. The intelligible ground of phenomena in this
subject does not concern empirical questions. It has to do only with
pure thought; and, although the effects of this thought and action
of the pure understanding are discoverable in phenomena, these
phenomena must nevertheless be capable of a full and complete
explanation, upon purely physical grounds and in accordance with
natural laws. And in this
case we attend solely to their empirical and
omit all consideration of their intelligible character (which is the
transcendental cause of the former) as completely unknown, except in
so far as it is exhibited by the latter as its empirical symbol. Now
let us apply this to experience. Man is a phenomenon of the sensuous
world and, at the same time, therefore, a natural cause, the causality
of which must be regulated by empirical laws. As such, he must possess
an empirical character, like all other natural phenomena. We remark
this empirical character in his actions, which reveal the presence
of certain powers and faculties. If we consider inanimate or merely
animal nature, we can discover no reason for ascribing to ourselves
any other than a faculty which is determined in a purely sensuous
manner. But man, to whom nature reveals herself only through sense,
cognizes himself not only by his senses, but also through pure
apperception; and this in actions and internal determinations, which
he cannot regard as sensuous impressions. He is thus to himself, on
the one hand, a phenomenon, but on the other hand, in respect of
certain faculties, a purely intelligible object— intelligible, because
its action cannot be ascribed to sensuous receptivity. These faculties
are understanding and reason. The latter, especially, is in a peculiar
manner distinct from all empirically—conditioned faculties, for it
employs ideas alone in the consideration of its objects, and by
means of these determines the understanding, which then proceeds to
make an empirical use of its own conceptions, which, like the ideas of
reason, are pure and non—empirical.
That reason possesses the faculty of causality, or that at least
we are compelled so to represent it, is evident from the
imperatives, which in the sphere of the practical we impose on many of
our executive powers. The words I ought express a species of
necessity, and imply a connection with grounds which nature does not
and cannot present to the mind of man. Understanding knows nothing
in nature but that which is, or has been, or will be. It would be
absurd to say that anything in nature ought to be other than it is
in the relations of time in which it stands; indeed, the ought, when
we consider merely the course of nature, bas neither application nor
meaning. The question, "What ought to happen in the sphere of nature?"
is just as absurd as the question, "What ought to be the properties of
a circle?" All that we are entitled to ask is, "What
takes place in
nature?" or, in the latter case, what
are the properties of a
circle?"
But the idea of an ought or of duty indicates a possible action, the
ground of which is a pure conception; while the ground of a merely
natural action is, on the contrary, always a phenomenon. This action
must certainly be possible under physical conditions, if it is
prescribed by the moral imperative ought; but these physical or
natural conditions do not concern the determination of the will
itself, they relate to its effects alone, and the consequences of
the effect in the world of phenomena. Whatever number of motives
nature may present to my will, whatever sensuous impulses— the moral
ought it is beyond their power to produce. They may produce a
volition, which, so far from being necessary, is always conditioned— a
volition to which the ought enunciated by reason, sets an aim and a
standard, gives permission or prohibition. Be the object what it
may, purely sensuous— as pleasure, or presented by pure reason— as
good, reason will not yield to grounds which have an empirical origin.
Reason will not follow the order of things presented by experience,
but, with perfect spontaneity, rearranges them according to ideas,
with which it compels empirical conditions to agree. It declares, in
the name of these ideas, certain actions to be necessary which
nevertheless have not taken place, and which perhaps never will take
place; and yet presupposes that it possesses the faculty of
causality in relation to these actions. For, in the absence of this
supposition, it could not expect its ideas to produce certain
effects in the world of experience.
Now, let us stop here and admit it to be at least possible that
reason does stand in a really causal relation to phenomena. In this
case it must— pure reason as it is— exhibit an empirical character.
For every cause supposes a rule, according to which certain
phenomena follow as effects from the cause, and every rule requires
uniformity in these effects; and this is the proper ground of the
conception of a cause— as a faculty or power. Now this conception
(of a cause) may be termed the empirical character of reason; and this
character is a permanent one, while the effects produced appear, in
conformity with the various conditions which accompany and partly
limit them, in various forms.
Thus the volition of every man has an empirical character,
which
is nothing more than the causality of his reason, in so far as its
effects in the phenomenal world manifest the presence of a rule,
according to which we are enabled to examine, in their several kinds
and degrees, the actions of this causality and the rational grounds
for these actions, and in this way to decide upon the subjective
principles of the volition. Now we learn what this empirical character
is only from phenomenal effects, and from the rule of these which is
presented by experience; and for this reason all the actions of man in
the world of phenomena are determined by his empirical character,
and the co—operative causes of nature. If, then, we could
investigate all the phenomena of human volition to their lowest
foundation in the mind, there would be no action which we could not
anticipate with certainty, and recognize to be absolutely necessary
from its preceding conditions. So far as relates to this empirical
character, therefore, there can be no freedom; and it is only in the
light of this character that we can consider the human will, when we
confine ourselves to simple
observation and, as is the case in
anthropology, institute a physiological investigation of the motive
causes of human actions.
But when we consider the same actions in relation to reason— not for
the purpose of explaining their origin, that is, in relation to
speculative reason, but to practical reason, as the producing cause of
these actions— we shall discover a rule and an order very different
from those of nature and experience. For the declaration of this
mental faculty may be that what has and could not but take place in
the course of nature, ought not to have taken place. Sometimes, too,
we discover, or believe that we discover, that the ideas of reason did
actually stand in a causal relation to certain actions of man; and
that these actions have taken place because they were determined,
not by empirical causes, but by the act of the will upon grounds of
reason.
Now, granting that reason stands in a causal relation to
phenomena; can an action of reason be called free, when we know
that, sensuously, in its empirical character, it is completely
determined and absolutely necessary? But this empirical character is
itself determined by the intelligible character. The latter we
cannot cognize; we can only indicate it by means of phenomena, which
enable us to have an immediate
cognition only of the empirical
character.
* An action, then, in so far as it is to be ascribed to an
intelligible cause, does not result from it in accordance with
empirical laws. That is to say, not the conditions of pure reason, but
only their effects in the internal sense, precede the act. Pure
reason, as a purely intelligible faculty, is not subject to the
conditions of time. The causality of reason in its intelligible
character
does not begin to be; it does not make its appearance at a
certain time, for the purpose of producing an effect. If this were not
the case, the causality of reason would be subservient to the
natural law of phenomena, which determines them according to time, and
as a series of causes and effects in time; it would consequently cease
to be freedom and become a part of nature. We are therefore
justified in saying: "If reason stands in a causal relation to
phenomena, it is a faculty which originates the sensuous condition
of an empirical series of effects." For the condition, which resides
in the reason, is non—sensuous, and therefore cannot be originated, or
begin to be. And thus we find— what we could not discover in any
empirical series— a
condition of a successive series of events
itself empirically unconditioned. For, in the present case, the
condition stands
out of and beyond the series of phenomena— it is
intelligible, and it consequently cannot be subjected to any
sensuous condition, or to any time—determination by a preceding cause.
[*]
The real morality of actions— their merit or demerit, and even that
of our own conduct, is completely unknown to us. Our estimates can
relate only to their empirical character. How much is the result of
the action of free will, how much is to be ascribed to nature and to
blameless error, or to a happy constitution of temperament (merito
fortunæ), no one can discover, nor, for this reason, determine with
perfect justice.
But, in another respect, the same cause belongs also to the series
of phenomena. Man is himself a phenomenon. His will has an empirical
character, which is the empirical cause of all his actions. There is
no condition— determining man and his volition in conformity with this
character— which does not itself form part of the series of effects in
nature, and is subject to their law— the law according to which an
empirically undetermined cause of an event in time cannot exist. For
this reason no given action can have an absolute and spontaneous
origination, all actions being phenomena, and belonging
to the world
of experience. But it cannot be said of reason, that the state in
which it determines the will is always preceded by some other state
determining it. For reason is not a phenomenon, and therefore not
subject to sensuous conditions; and, consequently, even in relation to
its causality, the sequence or conditions of time do not influence
reason, nor can the dynamical law of nature, which determines the
sequence of time according to certain rules, be applied to it.
Reason is consequently the permanent condition of all actions of the
human will. Each of these is determined in the empirical character
of the man, even before it has taken place. The intelligible
character, of which the former is but the sensuous schema, knows no
before or after; and every action, irrespective of the time—relation
in which it stands with other phenomena, is the immediate effect of
the intelligible character of pure reason, which, consequently, enjoys
freedom of action, and is not dynamically determined either by
internal or external preceding conditions. This freedom must not be
described, in a merely negative manner, as independence of empirical
conditions, for in this case the faculty of reason would cease to be a
cause of phenomena; but it must be regarded, positively, as a
faculty which can spontaneously originate a series of events. At the
same time, it must not be supposed that any beginning can take place
in reason; on the contrary, reason, as the unconditioned condition
of all action of the will, admits of no time—conditions, although
its effect does really begin in a series of phenomena— a beginning
which is not, however, absolutely primal.
I shall illustrate this regulative principle of reason by an
example, from its employment in the world of experience; proved it
cannot be by any amount of experience, or by any number of facts,
for such arguments cannot establish the truth of transcendental
propositions. Let us take a voluntary action— for example, a
falsehood— by means of which a man has introduced a certain degree
of confusion into the social life of humanity, which is judged
according to the motives from which it originated, and the blame of
which and of the evil consequences arising from it, is imputed to
the offender. We at first proceed to examine the empirical character
of the offence, and for this purpose we endeavour to penetrate to
the sources of that character, such as a defective education, bad
company,
a shameless and wicked disposition, frivolity, and want of
reflection— not forgetting also the occasioning causes which prevailed
at the moment of the transgression. In this the procedure is exactly
the same as that pursued in the investigation of the series of
causes which determine a given physical effect. Now, although we
believe the action to have been determined by all these circumstances,
we do not the less blame the offender. We do not blame him for his
unhappy disposition, nor for the circumstances which influenced him,
nay, not even for his former course of life; for we presuppose that
all these considerations may be set aside, that the series of
preceding conditions may be regarded as having never existed, and that
the action may be considered as completely unconditioned in relation
to any state preceding, just as if the agent commenced with it an
entirely new series of effects. Our blame of the offender is
grounded upon a law of reason, which requires us to regard this
faculty as a cause, which could have and ought to have otherwise
determined the behaviour of the culprit, independently of all
empirical conditions. This causality of reason we do not regard as a
co—operating agency, but as complete in itself. It matters not whether
the sensuous impulses favoured or opposed the action of this
causality, the offence is estimated according to its intelligible
character— the offender is decidedly worthy of blame, the moment he
utters a falsehood. It follows that we regard reason, in spite of
the empirical conditions of the act, as completely free, and
therefore, therefore, as in the present case, culpable.
The above judgement is complete evidence that we are accustomed to
think that reason is not affected by sensuous conditions, that in it
no change takes place— although its phenomena, in other words, the
mode in which it appears in its effects, are subject to change— that
in it no preceding state determines the following, and,
consequently, that it does not form a member of the series of sensuous
conditions which necessitate phenomena according to natural laws.
Reason is present and the same in all human actions and at all
times; but it does not itself exist in time, and therefore does not
enter upon any state in which it did not formerly exist. It is,
relatively to new states or conditions, determining, but not
determinable. Hence we cannot ask: "Why did not
reason determine
itself in a different manner?" The question ought to be thus stated:
"Why did not reason employ its power of causality to determine certain
phenomena in a different manner?" "But this is a question which admits
of no answer. For a different intelligible character would have
exhibited a different empirical character; and, when we say that, in
spite of the course which his whole former life has taken, the
offender could have refrained from uttering the falsehood, this
means merely that the act was subject to the power and authority—
permissive or prohibitive— of reason. Now, reason is not subject in
its causality to any conditions of phenomena or of time; and a
difference in time may produce a difference in the relation of
phenomena to each other— for these are not things and therefore not
causes in themselves— but it cannot produce any difference in the
relation in which the action stands to the faculty of reason.
Thus, then, in our investigation into free actions and the causal
power which produced them, we arrive at an intelligible cause,
beyond which, however, we cannot go; although we can recognize that it
is free, that is, independent of all sensuous conditions, and that, in
this way, it may be the sensuously unconditioned condition of
phenomena. But for what reason the intelligible character generates
such and such phenomena and exhibits such and such an empirical
character under certain circumstances, it is beyond the power of our
reason to decide. The question is as much above the power and the
sphere of reason as the following would be: Why does the
transcendental object of our external sensuous intuition allow of no
other form than that of intuition in space? But the problem, which we
were called upon to solve, does not require us to entertain any such
questions. The problem was merely this— whether freedom and natural
necessity can exist without opposition in the same action. To this
question we have given a sufficient answer; for we have shown that, as
the former stands in a relation to a different kind of condition
from those of the latter, the law of the one does not affect the law
of the other and that, consequently, both can exist together in
independence of and without interference with each other.
The reader must be careful to remark that my intention in the
above remarks has not been to prove the actual existence of freedom,
as a faculty in which resides the cause of certain sensuous phenomena.
For, not to mention that such an argument would not have a
transcendental character, nor have been limited to the discussion of
pure conceptions— all attempts at inferring from experience what
cannot be cogitated in accordance with its laws, must ever be
unsuccessful. Nay, more, I have not even aimed at demonstrating the
possibility of freedom; for this too would have been a vain endeavour,
inasmuch as it is beyond the power of the mind to cognize the
possibility of a reality or of a causal power by the aid of mere a priori
conceptions. Freedom has been considered in the foregoing
remarks only as a transcendental idea, by means of which reason aims
at originating a series of conditions in the world of phenomena with
the help of that which is sensuously unconditioned, involving
itself, however, in an antinomy with the laws which itself
prescribes for the conduct of the understanding. That this antinomy is
based upon a mere illusion, and that nature and freedom are at least
not opposed — this was the only thing in our power to prove, and the
question which it was our task to solve.
