Kant's Two Aspects Of The Moral Law

By the third section of the Groundwork, Kant has explained two aspects of the moral law that ground his discussion of freedom and why we must presuppose it’s existence as a property of the will of all rational beings. First, morality functions as a law for humanity only insofar as human beings are rational beings. In other words, the supreme practical principle of morality is a law that is valid for all rational beings, and because human beings are rational, it is a law that is valid for humanity. Second, the principle of morality must be determined by the quality of freedom alone. Kant claims that it follows from these two aspects of the moral law that the will of all rational agents must be considered free. That is to say, it must be proven that the activity of all rational beings in general contains the quality of freedom. …show more content…
This is not say that freedom is not governed by laws that stem from a notion of causality. Rather, if it is governed to laws in accordance with some special kind of causality, the contents of those laws are not accessible in the sensible world in the way that scientific laws relating to fungi gr. Kant argues that it follows from this that freedom must be presupposed as a property of the will of all rational beings in order to conceive of an agent willing anything at all. He does this by explaining the connection that our own idea of freedom has to our ability to be actually free with regard to matters of practical