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Click on the phrases to see them in context. The original texts by Immanuel Kant and David Hume are available from the Gutenberg Projet.
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Hence we cannot ask; "Why did not reason determine itself in a different manner?" The question ought to be thus stated; "Why did not reason employ its power of causality to determine certain phenomena in a different manner?" "But this is a question which admits of no answer. For it cannot be alleged that, instead of the laws of nature, laws of freedom may be introduced into the causality of the course of nature. Now, is it absolutely necessary that, granting that all effects are phenomena, the causality of the cause of these effects must also be a phenomenon and belong to the empirical world? In the latter case--although representation alone (for of its causality, by means of the will, we do not here speak) does not produce the object as to its existence, it must nevertheless be a priori determinative in regard to the object, if it is only by means of the representation that we can cognize anything as an object. His attention especially was directed to the principle of causality; and he remarked with perfect justice that the truth of this principle, and even the objective validity of the conception of a cause, was not commonly based upon clear insight, that is, upon a priori cognition.