In the Introduction to the Metaphysical Foundations of the Doctrine of Right, Kant assigns the will the function of giving laws and identifies it with practical reason. As merely lawgiving, Kant maintains, the will is neither free nor unfree: only the power of choice can be called free by virtue of its relation to action through maxims. Kant argues that this freedom cannot be defined as the capacity to choose for or against the moral law because this phenomenon of choice pertains to the human being qua appearance and therefore cannot define freedom, which is necessarily intelligible. For Kant, the negative concept of freedom of the power of choice consists in independence from determination by sensible impulses and the positive concept consists in the ability of pure reason to be practical. Furthermore, he claims that the possibility of deviating from the moral law is an incapacity (Unvermögen). Thus, Kant seems to hold that freedom is restricted to moral action. Nevertheless, there is room for interpretation: Kant’s remark might not be a blanket statement about free will per se but a specific claim about its definition. The matter is still contested in the secondary literature.

In his “General Overview of the Most Recent Philosophical Literature” (1797), Schelling considers Reinhold’s claim that the will must be separate from practical reason in light of Kant’s treatment of the distinction between the will and the power of choice. By divorcing the will from reason, Reinhold supposedly cannot account for our obligation under the moral law. Schelling observes that the discrepancy between Kant’s claim that the will is neither free nor unfree and Reinhold’s assertion that the will is free only insofar as it has the capacity to be good or evil is rooted in the nature of the will itself. Kant’s and Reinhold’s variance is, as it were, the result of a partial perspective of an issue properly conceived of only through a unified standpoint. Kant considers the will insofar as it is not an object of consciousness, Reinhold insofar as it occurs in consciousness. For Schelling, these seemingly disparate perspectives are integrated in the recognition that the power of choice is the appearance of an absolute will and, as such, indicates the action through which what is intellectual becomes empirical, the absolute becomes an object, and the infinite becomes finite.

Kant’s preliminary notes for the Introduction to the Metaphysical Foundations of the Doctrine of Right offer insight into his claims in the published text and his attempt to differentiate the legislative and executive moments of volition. In these notes Kant addresses the distinction between the will and the power of choice as well as the definition and scope of freedom of the power of choice. However, rather than settle the question of whether the capacity to choose to transgress the moral law belongs to freedom of the will, several of Kant’s statements seem to contradict. On the one hand, he claims that the free power of choice can be determined only by the law of the subject’s own causality and that there is no unlawful volition. On the other hand, he asserts that the power of choice is free to observe or transgress the law’s command. While Kant claims that only the power of choice, not the will, can be considered free, he also states that the will is free in another sense insofar as it is lawgiving. The context of these apparently conflicting claims suggest a nuanced account of freedom of the will and offer material for further scholarship.

In his “Some Remarks on the Concept of the Freedom of the Will, posed by I. Kant in the Introduction to the Metaphysical Foundations of the Doctrine of Right” (1797), K.L. Reinhold is incredulous that Kant could restrict free will to moral action after having previously emphasized the applicability of freedom to immoral action for the sake of moral imputation. Reinhold takes issue with Kant’s distinction between the will and the power of choice. According to Reinhold, the distinction is incoherent insofar as Kant defines freedom of the power of choice as the ability of pure reason to be practical, which seems to pertain to the legislative will rather than the executive power of choice. Reinhold interprets Kant’s conception of this freedom as precluding immoral action and claims that this would abolish the moral law’s normativity. Furthermore, Reinhold treats Kant’s denial that freedom of the power of choice can be defined as the capacity to choose for or against the moral law and Kant’s apparent declaration that the possibility of deviating from the moral law is an incapacity. If the possibility of deviating from the moral law were an incapacity, then, Reinhold maintains, the moral law would be impossible.