《道德形而上学基础·第三节·从道德形而上学过渡到纯粹实践理性批判》第1节
The Concept of Freedom is the Key that explains the Autonomy of the Will The will is a kind of causality belonging to living beings in so far as they are rational, and freedom would be this property of such causality that it can be efficient, independently of foreign causes determining it; just as physical necessity is the property that the causality of all irrational beings has of being determined to activity by the influence of foreign causes. 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." Now this is precisely the formula of the categorical imperative and is the principle of morality, so that a free will and a will subject to moral laws are one and the same.
注释摘要
这一段论证是全书第三节的开场，康德在这里要完成一个关键的推理转换：从自由的消极概念推向自由的积极概念，进而把自由与自律、自律与道德法则等同起来。他要证明的是一个链条——自由、自律、绝对命令，三者说到底是指向同一件事。 首先他把意志界定为一种因果性。这不是日常说的“我想做什么”，而是指理性存在者能够主动开启一个因果序列的能力。自由在这种框架里，首先被消极地理…