freedom, Kant explains, is the capacity of a cause to produce a state spontaneously, or “from itself” (von selbst) (CRP, A 533/B 561, 533). A transcendentally free cause would be a “first cause,” that is, without a prior cause. Kant justifies this claim by appealing to a requirement of reason, going back to the ancient tradition of the first mover: “The confirmation of the need of reason to appeal to a first beginning from freedom in the series of natural causes is clearly and visibly evident from the fact that (with the exception of the Epicurean school) all the philosophers of Antiquity saw themselves as obliged to assume a first mover for the explanation of motions in the world, i.e., a freely acting cause, which began this series of states first and from itself” (CPR, A 450/B 478, 488). The first instance of a free-acting cause is thus the first mover, which allows one to conceive of an origin of the world. The origin of the world cannot be in the world. Yet, as mentioned, the world as a totality is only possible on such basis. In fact, nature and freedom are for Kant thoroughly intertwined: absolute spontaneity is said to begin, “from itself,” “a series of appearances that runs according to natural laws” (CPR, A 446/B 474, 484), this already indicating that free causality, although independent from natural causality, is intertwined with it: just as natural necessity rests on transcendental freedom, freedom in turn produces effects in the world.
Kant recognizes that so far he has only established the necessity of a first beginning of a series of appearances from freedom “only to the extent that this is required to make comprehensible an origin of the world” (CPR, A 448/B 476, 486), which clearly for Kant does not apply to us. However, he insists, because “the faculty of beginning a series in time entirely on its own is thereby proved” (while he immediately recognizes, as alluded to prior, that this proof gives us no insight into it since such a faculty is transcendental and never to be observed within a field of appearances), then “we are permitted,” he continues, “also to allow that in the course of the world different series may begin on their own . . . and to ascribe to the substances in those series the faculty of acting from freedom” (CPR, A 450/B 478, 486). Kant thus posits the capacity to begin absolutely, to be a spontaneous free cause, cause of itself, causa sui, while also stating that such power is operating in the world. Further, Kant warns us not to be “stopped here by a misunderstanding, namely, that since a successive series in the world can have only a comparatively first beginning, because a state of the world must always precede it, perhaps no absolutely first beginning of the series is possible during the course of the world” (CPR, A 451/B 479, 488). This is only a misunderstanding, “for here we are talking of an absolute beginning not, as far as time is concerned, but as far as causality is concerned” (CPR, A 451/B 479, 488). There is the origin of the world, and there is also an origin in the world. It will be possible to speak of an absolute beginning in the world.
Kant posits the freedom of the will in terms of the spontaneity of the act, itself resting on the notion of causa sui. Now this concept traditionally only applies to God, and Kant does make explicit reference to the tradition of the prime mover. However, such a first cause only pertained to the origin of the world. The issue here is determining how can there be also an origin in the world and how one can reconcile such a free spontaneity with universal determinism, or causality of nature. How does one begin absolutely when every event must presuppose a prior event that causes it? How can there be an origin within the causal network of nature? Kant himself recognized the difficulty in admitting a free cause that would operate within the world, that is, within a chain of causes, for all that has been established so far was the necessity of a first beginning of a series of appearances from freedom as it pertained to the origin of the world, while “one can take all the subsequent states to be a result of mere natural laws” (CPR, A 448/B 476, 486). This is the antinomy of pure reason, the idea of a free cause or unconditioned causality constituting for Kant “the real stumbling block for philosophy” (CPR, A 448/B 476, 486). Kant attempts to resolve this problem by distinguishing a beginning in time from a beginning in causality, the latter applying to free agency operating in the world. As (transcendentally) free agents, we can never begin in time, but we can begin in causality. Only in the case of divine creation beginning in time and beginning in causality are merged. For our own free actions, the beginning is only in causality (as we are not origins of the world but origins in the world, that is, beginning in causality). In the causality by freedom, in beginning in causality, no antecedent cause determines my actions, which in no way can “be regarded as simple causal consequences of the antecedent state of the agent.” In the midst of the world, and within the world and in the course of time itself, certain events somehow happen as absolute beginnings. To the potential objection that no absolute beginning can happen in the world, Kant replies that there can be a comparatively first beginning, that there can be an absolute beginning (in causality) occurring in medias res. Kant is explicit on this point: namely, that there is an origin of the world, but there are also origins in the world, writing that “we are permitted also to allow that in the course of the world different series may begin on their own as far as their causality is concerned” (CPR, A 450/B 478, 486). Even though freedom can only take place within the causal network of the world, it remains nonetheless absolute and uncaused, Kant insisting that an absolute first beginning of a series is possible during the course of the world.
Thus, on the one hand, the capacity to begin a new series of causes from oneself is absolute (although it is an absolute beginning only in causality and not in time), and on the other hand this capacity affects the fabric of the world and its causal laws. We introduce something new in the world, out of our own spontaneity,26 but what we introduce is something new in the world, which then gets taken up in natural causality. Whatever I decide to do out of this transcendental freedom still has to take place in the world. The new that I introduce is absolute (otherwise it would not be “new”), but that absolute happens in the conditioned world (this is why Kant spoke of a “comparatively first beginning”). All I can do is begin a new series of causes, themselves inscribed in nature. This is why Kant establishes that one must assume a first uncaused beginning, but along with it, “its natural consequences to infinity,” consequences of the free act which follow purely natural laws (CPR, A 450/B 478, 488). In a sense, the act is both free or uncaused and part of natural determinism, according to Kant’s distinction between a beginning in time (natural determinism) and a beginning in causality (freedom). To take Kant’s example: “If (for example), I am now entirely free, and get up from my chair without the necessarily determining influence of natural causes, then in this occurrence, along with its natural consequences to infinity, there begins an absolutely new series, even though as far as time is concerned this occurrence is only the continuation of a previous series” (CPR, A 450/B 478, 488). With respect to the event of freedom, natural causes exercise no determining influence whatsoever. Free action does indeed “follow upon them,” but “does not follow from” them (die zwar auf jene folgt, aber daraus nicht erfolgt).
This break with natural causality opens the possibility of a rethinking of the event, the happening of which is understood on the basis of this absolute causal spontaneity beginning from itself, “absolute spontaneity of an action” or transcendental freedom, which Hannah Arendt attempted to designate under the name of “natality.” As she puts it in The Human Condition, “the new beginning inherent in birth can make itself felt in the world only because the newcomer possesses the capacity of beginning something anew, that is, of acting” (HC, 9). This “natal” power of beginning, this performativity of transcendental freedom (defined by Kant as the power, Vermögen, of beginning a state spontaneously or from oneself, von selbst), as decision to act, outside of natural causality, introduces the new in the world. Hence the importance of the motif of revolution for Arendt, for “the relevance of the problem of beginning to the phenomenon of revolution is obvious”27 Indeed, “revolutions are the only political events which confront us directly and inevitably with the problem of beginning” (OR, 21). Now such events are never devoid of violence, Arendt noting that “such a beginning must be must be intimately connected with violence” to the extent that “no beginning could be made without using violence, without violating.” The event always carries the violence of absolute beginnings. The event is here synonymous with
