Abstract
Abstract This chapter discusses the importance of freedom in Kant's ethics, looking at his ideas about human nature and rationality. Kant thinks that we have to understand ourselves as free to choose courses of action. He describes this as freedom in a negative sense. But there is another sense in which, for Kant, we are free. This is the freedom that we exercise when we make choices in accordance with rational principles. Kant calls this positive freedom, and he thinks that we must also understand ourselves as being free in this positive sense. To have positive freedom is to be capable of acting for specifically moral reasons. Kantian freedom is not a means to an end; it is a way of living in which we guide ourselves in accordance with rationally defensible principles.
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