"For all of their differences, Locke, Spinoza, and Kant ... share a common core in their conception of freedom, which we may justly characterize in general as "modern liberty": a view of freedom as spontaneous and unconditioned causality, or as active power that produces effects as a result of self-originating energy rather than receiving determination from outside of itself. What we wish to suggest ... is that such a conception of freedom, because it relentlessly separates potentiality from actuality, represents, in its depths, a flight from reality."