Trucs marrants Image mixer TrueSpam ShakeSpam ThinkSpam

Cliquer sur les phrases pour les voir dans leur contexte. Les textes de Immanuel Kant et David Hume sont disponibles auprès du Projet Gutenberg.

It is especially remarkable that the practical conception of freedom is based upon the transcendental idea, and that the question of the possibility of the former is difficult only as it involves the consideration of the truth of the latter.

There are only two modes of causality cogitable--the causality of nature or of freedom. For, if freedom were determined according to laws, it would be no longer freedom, but merely nature. If, on the other hand, we were to ask Priestley--a philosopher who had no taste for transcendental speculation, but was entirely devoted to the principles of empiricism--what his motives were for overturning those two main pillars of religion--the doctrines of the freedom of the will and the immortality of the soul (in his view the hope of a future life is but the expectation of the miracle of resurrection)- this philosopher, himself a zealous and pious teacher of religion, could give no other answer than this; I acted in the interest of reason, which always suffers, when certain objects are explained and judged by a reference to other supposed laws than those of material nature--the only laws which we know in a determinate manner. But since the moral law is binding on each individual in the use of his freedom of volition, even if others should not act in conformity with this law, neither the nature of things, nor the causality of actions and their relation to morality, determine how the consequences of these actions will be related to happiness; and the necessary connection of the hope of happiness with the unceasing endeavour to become worthy of happiness, cannot be cognized by reason, if we take nature alone for our guide. The existence of practical freedom can be proved from experience alone. By confining the view to particular passages, taking these out of their connection and comparing them with one another, it is easy to pick out apparent contradictions, especially in a work written with any freedom of style. Experience demonstrates to us the existence of practical freedom as one of the causes which exist in nature, that is, it shows the causal power of reason in the determination of the will.

Possibility of Freedom in Harmony with the Universal Law of Natural Necessity.