AUTONOMY, in general, freedom from external restraint, self-government (Gr. can63, self, and v6/..cos, law). In philosophy, the term (with its antithesis "heteronomy") was applied by Kant to that aspect of the rational will in which, qua rational, it is a law to itself, independently alike of any external authority, of the results of experience and of the impulses of pleasure and pain. In the sphere of morals, the ultimate and only authority which the mind can recognize is the law which emerges from the pure moral consciousness. This is the only sense in which moral freedom can be understood. (See ETHICS ; KANT.) Though the term "autonomy" in its fullest sense implies entire freedom from causal necessity, it can also be used even in determinist theories for relative independence of particular conditions, theological or conventional.