In this paper I examine a thesis originally put forward by Max Weber and Ernst Troeltsch according to which Aquinas, in his doctrine of natural law, anticipated Kant's, notion of the autonomy of practical reason. This, primarily, involves a close analysis of Kant's argument in the "Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals" in which his conception of autonomy takes centre stage. My claim is that the Weber Troeltsch thesis is false, but not for the reasons usually indicated by its critics. Kant's notion of autonomy neither contains the notion of discretion nor does Kant fail to provide an objectivist conception of morality. Rather, it is his anti-realist objectivism and its metaphysical foundation, i.e. the idea of transcendental freedom, which is at odds with Aquinas's creationist metaphysics and realist metaethics. Aquinas's metaphysics and mefaethics allow only a weaker variant of human freedom and they require a reliabilist moral epistemology.
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