Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason — trans. F. Max Müller

Now supposing one could say that reason [p. 551] possesses causality in reference to phenomena, could the action of reason be called free in that case, as it is accurately determined by the empirical character (the disposition) and rendered necessary by it ? That character again is determined in the intelligible character (way of thinking).

The latter, however, we do not know, but signify only through phenomena, which in reality give us immediately a knowledge of the disposition (empirical character) only.^ An action, so far as it is to be attributed to the way of thinking as its cause, does nevertheless not result from it according to empirical laws, that is, it is not preceded by the conditions of pure reason, but only by its effects in the phenomenal form of the internal sense.

Pure reason, as a simple intelligible faculty, is not subject to the form of time, or to the conditions of the succession of time. The causality of reason in its intelligible character does not arise or begin at a certain time in order to produce an effect ; for in that case it would be subject to the natural law of phenomena, which deter- [p. 552] mines all causal series in time, and its causality would then be nature and not freedom.

What, therefore, we can say is, that if reason can possess causality with reference to phenomena, it is a faculty through which the sensuous condition of an empirical series of effects first begins. For the condition that lies in reason is not sensuous, and

1 The true morality of actions (merit or guilt), even that of our own conduct, remains therefore entirely hidden. Our imputations can refer to the empirical character only. How much of that may be the pure effect of freedom, how much should be ascribed to nature only, and to the faults of temperament, for which man is not responsible, or its happy constitution {merito fortunae) y no one can discover, and no one can judge with perfect justice.

Transcendental Dialectic 447

therefore does itself not begin. Thus we get what we missed in all empirical series, namely, that the condition of a successive series of events should itself be empirically unconditioned. For here the condition is really outside the series of phenomena (in the intelligible), and therefore not subject to any sensuous condition, nor to any temporal determination through preceding causes.

Nevertheless the same cause belongs also, in another respect, to the series of phenomena. Man himself is a phenomenon. His will has an empirical character, which is the (empirical) cause of all his actions. There is no condition, determining man according to this character, that is not contained in the series of natural effects and subject to their law, according to which there can be no empirically unconditioned causality of anything that happens in time. No given action therefore (as it can be perceived as a phenomenon only) can begin absolutely by itself. Of pure reason, however, we cannot [p. 553] say that the state in which it determines the will is preceded by another in which that state itself is determined. For as reason itself is not a phenomenon, and not subject to any of the conditions of sensibility, there exists in it, even in reference to its causality, no succession of time, and the dynamical law of nature, which determines the succession of time according to rules, cannot be applied to it.

Reason is therefore the constant condition of all free actions by which man takes his place in the phenomenal world. Every one of them is determined beforehand in his empirical character, before it becomes actual. With regard to the intelligible character, however, of which the empirical is only the sensuous schema, there is neither

44^ Transcendental Dialectic