 Kant’s argument from freedom to the Categorical Imperative is very short indeed (see Critique of Practical Reason, 5:19–30). If I am free to step back from all inclinations, those inclinations do not provide a compelling reason to act in any particular way. All that is left to determine my way of acting (my maxim, in Kant’s terminology) is “the mere form of giving universal law” (5:27). By the “mere form of… law” Kant means that there must be some principle, some overall policy or structure, determining what I do—otherwise my actions would be merely random, and hence unintelligible: no-one would be able to follow them (not even me). More than this, no principle is truly law-like unless it abstracts from an agent’s particular motivations and situation, so as to be followable by all. Only then can it be capable of “giving universal law.”