 This claim must be understood in light of Kant’s more general claim that moral law cannot be based upon happiness or any other given empirical good. In the Groundwork Kant contrasts an ethics of autonomy, in which the will (Wille, or practical reason itself) is the basis of its own law, from the ethics of heteronomy, in which something independent of the will, such as happiness, is the basis of moral law (4:440–41). In the Critique of Practical Reason he argues that happiness (the agreeableness of life when things go in accordance with one’s wishes and desires), although universally sought by human beings, is not specific enough to entail any particular universal desires in human beings. Further, even were there any universal desires among human beings, those desires would, as empirical, be merely contingent and thus unworthy of being the basis of any pure moral law (5:25–26). No particular conception of happiness can be the basis of the pure principle of the state, and the general conception of happiness is too vague to serve as the basis of a law. Hence, a “universal principle of right” cannot be based upon happiness but only on something truly universal, such as freedom. The “universal principle of right” Kant offers is thus “Any action is right if it can coexist with everyone’s freedom in accordance with a universal law, or if on its maxim the freedom of choice of each can coexist with everyone’s freedom in accordance with a universal law” (6:230).