Dr. Jörg Noller LMU Munich “Practical reason is not the will”: Kant and Reinhold's dilemma Forthcoming in European Journal of Philosophy 1. Introduction Karl Leonhard Reinhold’s philosophy is especially known as a prominent link between Kant and German Idealism.1 In his Elementary Philosophy (“Elementarphilosophie”) Reinhold attempted to give a new account of the principles of consciousness that unify Kant’s entire critical philosophical system. He can be regarded as one of the first of “Kant’s early critics” to develop an “idealist” conception of transcendental philosophy by means of a “Systematic Spirit”.2 However, Reinhold also developed a profound practical philosophy by dealing with Kant’s moral philosophy, concerning most notably his theory of practical reason, will, freedom, and autonomy. Contrary to his theoretical critique, this practical critique and its underlying action theory and theory of freedom have been neglected in scholarship.3 Recently, however, there has been growing interest in the so-called “Reinhold/Sidgwick problem” or “Objection R/S”4, which concerns our freedom to act against the moral law. However, Reinhold’s philosophical contributions to this problem have not yet been reconstructed from a systematic point of view. What is important about Reinhold’s account is that he aims to develope a positive conception of freedom to act morally evil that differs in crucial regards from Kant’s asymmetrical account. For Kant’s theory seems to imply that we are only free to act morally good, to which Henry Allison has referred as Kant’s “reciprocity thesis”. 1 See for example Dieter Henrich, Between Kant and Hegel. Lectures on German Idealism, Ed. by David S. Pacini, (Cambridge, MA./London: Harvard University Press, 2003). 2 Cf. Henrich (2003), 127-139. 3 The Stanford Encyclopedia article on Reinhold, for example, does not discuss Reinhold’s specific conception of freedom. 4 See Fugate (2015), 354-5; Wuerth (2013), 4. For a comprehensive discussion of Reinhold’s conception of freedom see Stolz/Heinz/Bondeli (2012). This volume contains both English and German contributions. Dr. Jörg Noller LMU Munich In my paper I will shed light on Reinhold’s practical philosophy after Kant and its historical and systematic significance. First, I outline Kant’s conception of autonomy and the relation between the faculties of pure practical reason and will. I then explain the so-called “Reinhold’s Dilemma,” which concerns the problem of moral imputability in the case of evil actions, which arises from Kant’s theory of autonomy. I then show how Reinhold tried to escape this dilemma by introducing an elaborated action theory and theory of individual freedom. I will argue that Reinhold’s symmetrical account of freedom to act according and against the moral law is not best understood in terms of freedom of indifference, but rather in terms of a freedom to balance reasons on the basis of first and second-order volitions. I also discuss Kant’s attempt to escape Reinhold’s Dilemma in his late Metaphysics of Morals. Finally, I evaluate Reinhold’s systematic significance by relating his theory of individual freedom to recent conceptions of volitional self-determination. 2. Kant on freedom as autonomy Kant’s theory of human freedom is motivated by the strong claim of a moral agent’s absolute volitional imputability. He claims that “the human being must make or have made himself into whatever he is or should become in a moral sense, good or evil. These two [characters] must be an effect of his free power of choice (“Willkür”), for otherwise they could not be imputed to him and, consequently, he could be neither morally good nor evil.”5 In order to fulfil these requirements, Kant needs to do justice to two requirements. On the one hand, a person’s decision must not depend on external factors, for in this case an action wouldn’t be imputable to the person’s will (i.e. heteronomy). On the other hand, a free decision must not must not be 5 Kant, RBMR, 6:44. Dr. Jörg Noller LMU Munich groundless (i.e. indifferentism), but must follow out of reasons that stem from the inner person’s will. Kant attempted to fulfil both requirements by introducing his concept of a “pure will”6. The pure will is essentially independent from external influences, and depends only on its own laws (i.e. autonomy). In order to guarantee absolute and radical self-determination, Kant refers to his conception of freedom as autonomy. In his Critique of Practical Reason, which—even more than in his Groundwork—is concerned with this problem, Kant formulated the “first question” in the sense of “whether pure reason of itself alone suffices to determine the will or whether it can be a determining ground of the will only as empirically conditioned.”7 This question arises from the critical position of the human will, which “stands between its a priori principle, which is formal, and its a posteriori incentive, which is material, as at a crossroads”8. Absolute freedom of the will is only possibly by the lawful form of pure, that is empirically non-contaminated reason. To decide on the basis of material, that is concrete and contingent motives, however, would obliterate its autonomy insofar “all laws that are determined with reference to an object give heteronomy”9. The first requirement of autonomy is therefore the independence of any material motives, hence “the first concept of it is negative”10. However, the crucial point of autonomy is its positive freedom, not freedom from but to. Negative freedom alone does not suffice to explain the full concept of an autonomy of the will: “The preceding definition of freedom is negative and therefore unfruitful for insight into its essence; but there flows from it a positive concept of freedom, which is so much the richer and 6 Kant, RBMR, 6:45. Kant, CPrR, 5:15. 8 Kant, GMM, 4:400. 9 Kant, GMM, 4:458. 10 Kant, CPrR, 5:29 7 Dr. Jörg Noller LMU Munich more fruitful.”11 An entirely indifferent and unlawful will would be independent from the law of nature, however, the will’s decision would not have any determination at all and would be arbitrary in the bad sense (i.e. indifferentism). For that reason, Kant insists that freedom of the will “is not for that reason lawless but must instead be a causality in accordance with immutable laws but of a special kind; for otherwise a free will would be an absurdity”12. Kant explains this special kind of law in terms of a special kind of causality that he refers to as a “causality of reason”13 or “causality through freedom”14. It is the will under the moral law that establishes such a causality as “a true higher faculty of desire, to which the pathologically determinable is subordinate, and then only is reason really, and indeed specifically, distinct from the latter, so that even the least admixture of the latter’s impulses infringes upon its strength and superiority”15. According to Kant, the “[w]ill is a kind of causality of living beings insofar as they are rational, and freedom would be that property of such causality that it can be efficient independently of alien causes determining it”16. This entails the “reciprocity thesis”17, according to which “a free will and a will under moral laws are one and the same.”18 3. Reinhold’s Dilemma However, Kant’s theory of autonomy raises a serious issue when it comes to moral imputability. 11 Kant, GMM, 4:446 Kant, GMM, 4:446; my emphasis 13 Kant, CPrR, 5:80. 14 Kant, CPrR, 5:47. 15 Kant, CPrR, 5:25. 16 Kant, GMM, 4:446. 17 Allison (1996). 18 Kant, GMM, 4:447. 12 Dr. Jörg Noller LMU Munich This “imputability problem”19 stems from a conflict between Kant’s general imputability thesis (IT) and his autonomy thesis (AT), which shall justify IT. (IT): The free agent is morally responsible for her morally right and wrong actions and has free choice between the alternatives of good and evil. (AT): The absolute cause of the autonomous action lies in the causality of pure practical reason and its moral law. From IT and AT follows the so-called “autonomy problem” (AP), which can be explicated in a strong (AP1) and a weak sense (AP2). (AP1) A causality of free action that contradicts the moral law cannot be thought consistently for this causality itself stems from pure reason. The category of evil cannot be consistently explained as a “modus”20 of a causality of freedom on the “basis”21 of the moral law; hence, an evil action cannot be a product of autonomous reason, and therefore is not an autonomous action. (AP2) A practical cognition of evil means to decide at the same time to give up one’s autonomy by jumping from autonomy to heteronomy. However, this jump itself cannot be explained within the framework of a conception of autonomy and therefore seems to be a 19 Hudson (1991), 179. Kant, CPrR, 5:65. 21 Cf. Kant, RBMR, 5:66. 20 Dr. Jörg Noller LMU Munich groundless event. A voluntary free jump to heteronomy falls short of autonomy, for it happens within a lawless sphere. In Anglophone scholarship, Henry Sidgwick was the first to hint at AP1: “Kant, either expressly or by implication, identifies Will and Reason; for this identification obviously excludes the possibility of Will’s choosing between Reason and non-rational impulses.”22 Sidgwick identified a “confusion” between two different conceptions of freedom in Kant’s theory, namely “(1) the Freedom that is only realised in right conduct, when reason successfully resists the seductions of appetite or passion, and (2) the Freedom to choose between right and wrong, which is, of course, equally realised in either choice.”23 However, almost one hundred years earlier, Karl Leonhard Reinhold had already pointed to AP1 in the Second Volume of his Letters on the Kantian Philosophy from 1792. Especially in the Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Letter, Reinhold provides a subtle analysis of the imputability problem, and then attempts to solve it by introducing a modified action theory as well as an elaborated concept of freedom of the will in order to perfect Kant’s account of autonomy. Already in his letter to Jens Immanuel Baggesen, dating from March 28 of 1792—immediately before the First Section of Kant’s Religion appeared—he gave an overview of his most important points of criticism, and also revealed his new and different understanding of freedom as individual autonomy in opposition to Kant’s general account: “I utterly distance myself from Kant and the Kantians concerning the concept of will, which I neither take for a causality of reason, nor a faculty to act according to given laws and so forth, but for a person’s faculty, equally distinct from reason and sensibility, to determine oneself towards the satisfaction or non22 23 Sidgwick (1888), 405-412.411. Sidgwick (1888), 405. Dr. Jörg Noller LMU Munich satisfaction of a desire (claim of the self-interested drive).” After this mostly negative definition, Reinhold goes on specifying his concept of positive freedom: Indeed, this self-determination takes place by rules, and insofar by reason; but thereby reason behaves as a mere faculty that can be used by the willing subject in two different ways, for it depends on the subject whether the rule is used as a mere means for the satisfaction of the selfish drive, or as an end […].24 Aside from the modified concept of the use of reason, we find here a crucial modification of the relationship between empirical and rational motives of the will. For Reinhold adds in the aforementioned letter: “I even distance myself from Kant concerning the concept of morality […] for I cannot conceive of morality without sensibility.”25 Reinhold also highlights some problematic implications that seem to follow from Kant’s theory of the autonomy of reason. The “friends of Kantian Philosophy,“ as Reinhold puts it, “attempted to save the will from the slavery of the instinct only in that way insofar as they made it the slave of the force of reason”. These “friends,” according to Reinhold, “attempted to escape will’s necessitation of sensibility only by conceiving the will as being inevitably necessitated by reason”.26 However, according to this conception, “a moral action could only be understood as a mere effect of reason”27. If “the will were only free with regard to moral actions, and the ground of immoral actions laid outside the will in external obstacles and barriers,” Reinhold goes on, 24 Reinhold (1831), 166-169. 168 f. Baggesen Letters 1, 168. 26 Reinhold, Letters II, 200. 27 Reinhold, Letters II, 200. 25 Dr. Jörg Noller LMU Munich so also the reason of moral actions would by no means to be found in the mere selfactivity of practical reason but rather in the absence of these obstacles that are entirely independent from this reason. The whole freedom of this reason, and by it also of the person, would only consist in an accidental independence from external force and restricted to certain cases that would by no means be in the control of the person. The moral action would follow inevitably by a entirely involuntary effect of practical reason as soon as there would not be any obstacle; and the moral or immoral action would have to be imputed to the sheer presence or absence of this obstacle.28 Intelligible fatalism and empirical determinism are, according to Reinhold, only two sides of the same coin for neither can explain how a person can both rationally and freely decide to act against the moral law. Hence, the conceptual challenge for Reinhold consists in developing a complex concept of individual freedom that avoids (i) intelligible fatalism, (ii) empirical determinism, and (iii) indifferentism. The faculty of the will must, on the one hand, not be hypostatized and conceived as something absolutely distinct and separated from reason, which would lead to indifferentism. On the other hand, it must not be fully identified with reason, which would lead to a rational determinism that would render any voluntary deviation from the moral law conceptually impossible. 4. Schmid’s “intelligible fatalism” Who are these “friends of Kantian Philosophy” that Reinhold referred to in his discussion of Kant’s conception of autonomy? Immediately after Kant’s practical writings—his Groundwork 28 Reinhold, Letters II, 200. Dr. Jörg Noller LMU Munich and his Critique of Practical Reason—appeared, Carl Christian Erhard Schmid (1761-1812), one of the most prominent Kantians in Jena, gave an interpretation of Kant’s conception of autonomous reason in terms of an “intelligible fatalism”.29 The relevance of Schmid’s interpretation consists in the fact that it exposes crucial problems of Kant’s conception of autonomy by making them explicit and consequently thinking them through to the end. Schmid referred to questions that concern the freedom to act morally evil and which had not been clarified in the Second Critique. Reading the Second Critique as a definition or explanation of actual human freedom, not as a hypothesis, but as pure reason becoming acutally practical, leads to the problem of an “intelligible fatalism”30 in the sense of AP1: There is only one open way of autonomy in case of morally good actions—via the necessitation of the moral law—whereas it is conceptually impossible to depart from this way, that is to act morally evil. According to this view, acting morally evil seems to be a lapse of reason; acting according to reason, in contrast, a fatalistic engagement. With regard to morally good actions, Schmid’s intelligible fatalism entails “the assertion of a general necessity according to rational laws”31. Schmid’s fatalistic interpretation of Kant’s conception of autonomy can be understood as a catalyst that provoked a series of alternative conceptions aiming at defending Kant’s theory on the one hand, and at modifying it on the other hand concerning its conceptual ambiguities. Already in his Glossary for the better use of Kant’s Writings (Wörterbuch zum leichtern Gebrauch der Kantischen Schriften) from 1788, Schmid wrote under the lemma “Autonomy/Autonomie” the following: “Acting freely, automatically and morally good are 29 Schmid’s theory of freedom can be found in his Essay of a Moral Philosophy (Versuch einer Moralphilosophie). Jena 1790; 21792. 30 Schmid, Versuch (1790), 257, 211. 31 Schmid, Versuch (1792), 263, 397. Dr. Jörg Noller LMU Munich synonyms”32. The word “automatic” (“automatisch”) is arguably not a misspelling of “autonomous” (“autonomisch”) but rather a reference to the term “automaton spirituale”, which can be found in the philosophical works of Spinoza, Leibniz and Kant. It means a kind of mental self-movement or self-activity and must be distinguished from contemporary associations with automats, machines or robots. To justify his position, Schmid referred to Kant’s concept of an “obstacle”33 of pure practical reason, which he interpreted in a metaphysical sense. With regard to the possibility of moral responsibility, this means that morally evil actions do not occur on the basis of a free decision of the will, but due to the fact that the intention of pure practical reason to realize its inherent good is prevented by something external to reason.34 According to Schmid, both free and morally good actions can only occur when they are causally dependent on the unimpeded activity of practical reason: “When and insofar actions bear the imprint of rational self-activity, or when a given substance is determined and treated according to the form of reason, then they are moral actions; immoral by contrast, insofar as there is no trace of an effect of self-active reason.”35 Because Schmid does not suppose a volitional use of freedom according to which evil actions occur on the basis of reasons, he not only holds a privation theory of evil but even a privation theory of the freedom of evil: “Immoral actions and attitudes by no means depend on the own, absolute self-activity […], but rather on the privation of it.”36 The “capacity to act immorally” is, as Schmid puts it, “a consequence of the restriction of our freedom, that is, with 32 Schmid (1788), 6. Kant, CPrR, 5:75. 34 Cf. Schmid, Versuch (1790), 252, 206. 35 Schmid, Versuch (1790), 251, 206. 36 Schmid Versuch (1792), 252, 342 33 Dr. Jörg Noller LMU Munich regard to reason, of its incapacity [my emphasis]“37. As a result, “man, once he acts immorally, is never entirely in his senses, that is he does not have the capacity of moral freedom.”38 Hence, according to Schmid, we have “no freedom, no original inner determining ground to want evil”, but are, “in this respect […] merely dependent”39. The capacity to act morally evil is thus “an unthinkable thought” or a “non-thought [“Nichtgedanke”]”40. 5. Reinhold’s critique of pure practical reason To conceive of this “incapacity” or “non-thought” in a positive sense and to make our freedom to act evilly understandable is the main intention of Reinhold’s critique of Kant’s conception of autonomy. With regard to Schmid’s “intelligible fatalism,” Reinhold wrote: His [that is Schmid’s] claim: that man acts only freely in the case of morally good but not in morally evil actions, and that he is inevitably determined to the latter, incenses me to the highest degree. Nevertheless I must admire the subtlety that he employed. His πρῶτον ψεῦδος is the Kantian concept of the will as a causality of reason from which certainly follows that, if morality is the activity of reason, immorality couldn’t be the activity of reason and, since only reason’s activity shall be free, couldn’t be free. 41 Beginning with his critique of Schmid’s intelligible fatalism, Reinhold attempts to give a new definition of the will. In a first step that can be described as “freeing the will”42, Reinhold aims to 37 Schmid 1792, § 249, 335. Schmid 1792, § 249, 336. 39 Schmid 1792, § 252, 341. 40 Schmid, Vorrede, X. 41 Baggesen-Letters, 1, 169. 42 Marx (2011), 286. 38 Dr. Jörg Noller LMU Munich separate and isolate the will from its narrow conceptual attachment to pure practical reason, in order to escape the problem of intelligible fatalism. The project of such a dissociation of will and reason serves the purpose of developing a concept of negative freedom. In a second step, Reinhold determines the will insofar as he conceives of it as a “basic faculty” [“Grundvermögen”] not only together with, but above the other three human faculties as sensibility, understanding, and reason, and beyond the symmetric alternative of the “selfish” and the “unselfish drive” (“eigennütziger” / “uneigennütziger Trieb”).43 Finally, in a third step, Reinhold provides a positive account of freedom by determining the will in a self-reflexive manner insofar the will as the power of choice (“Willkür”) freely determines itself to possible alternatives of action by decision. For this purpose, Reinhold develops a critical action theory in the course of which he interprets the relationship between will and reason in terms of a practice: “The effect of reason can never contradict reason; but the action of a person by reason can, since the latter is not founded in the definite procedure of reason, but in the capacity to determine one’s action on one’s own and to deliberately make use of reason [my emphasis].”44 Following Kant, philosophers—such as Schmid—“confused the actions of the will with the utterances of reason in willing” and “personified reason in its moral actions by a very natural subreption, or, which is the same, let reason act independently from the person’s choice (“Willkür”).”45 The consequence of such an identification consists in the fact that “the acting reason has not other maxim left than the practical law itself. Hence, there is no volitional use of reason in willing, and the immoral actions cease to be free [my emphasis]”46. In doing so, Reinhold adds another dimension to the 43 Reinhold, Letters II, 194. Reinhold, Letters II, 180. 45 Reinhold, Letters II, 180. 46 Reinhold, Letters II, 179 f. 44 Dr. Jörg Noller LMU Munich relationship between will and reason insofar as both causally depend on each other. Reinhold’s critique of Kant’s conception of will leads to the following central observation: “Practical reason is not the will, even if it belongs essentially to the will and expresses itself in each actual willing. Reason’s action, however, happens merely involuntarily.”47 Here we see again that Reinhold conceives of will and reason as deeply connected, however not as an identity—as Kant did in his “reciprocity thesis”—but in the form of a deliberate and reflexive relationship of mutual application by an individual person. In doing so, Reinhold shifts from a conception of freedom as autonomy of reason to a conception of freedom as choice. By distinguishing between the will’s normative and metaphysical connection to the moral law, Reinhold is able to develop a conception of freedom against the moral law. The first is necessary, whereas the latter is merely contingent and depends upon the will’s decision: “The person realizes that it does not depend on her whether she shall or shall not, but on whether willing or not willing what she shall”48. This allows Reinhold to avoid both moral relativism and intelligible fatalism. It becomes clear that a person, according to Reinhold, can voluntarily reflect upon the norms of practical reason. Practical self-consciousness, on the one hand, is not indifferent with respect to the normativity of morality, however, on the other hand, it is not bound to it but can position itself towards the demands of practical reason. The moral law is not immediately effective but only by means of a person’s voluntary reflection upon it, on the basis of second-order volitions that are finally realized in actions. Second-order volitions are no longer bound to the capacity of pure practical reason but to the individual person’s most fundamental maxims. 47 48 Reinhold, Letters II, 198. Reinhold, Letters II, 198 f. Dr. Jörg Noller LMU Munich According to Reinhold’s conception of personal self-consciousness, free selfdetermination does not coincide with pure rational will, but can be actual in the form of impure willing. What matters for the freedom of the will is therefore not the question of whether reason determines the will, but how it does so: “We cannot make sense of the immoral action as well as the moral action without considering the use of reason that belongs to the essence of every action [my emphasis].”49 For that reason, self-determination is, according to Reinhold, “freedom through and against the law“50. By sharply distinguishing between the judgement (“principium diiudicationis”) and the execution (“principium executionis”) of the moral law, Reinhold thus develops a double aspect theory of the will: “The will ceases to be free if one considers it onesidedly”51. A closer look reveals that the pure and the impure will are “one and the same will, only considered from different perspectives”52. As Reinhold emphasizes, “the pure will as well as the impure […] are nothing else than the two at the same time possible modes of action of the free will; both together belong to the nature of freedom that ceases to exist without one of both [my emphasis]”53. Reinhold’s conception of negative freedom corresponds to Kant’s concept of “freedom in the negative sense” as the “independence from all matter of the law (namely, from a desired object)”54, since freedom in both cases presupposes the capacity to suspend immediate motives of the will. However, both concepts vary when it comes to positive freedom. Even if positive freedom, according to Kant and Reinhold, concerns not a material but a formal aspect, both conceptions differ since “freedom in the positive sense,” according to Kant, is “lawgiving of its 49 Reinhold, Letters II, 175. Reinhold, Letters II, 198 f. 51 Reinhold, Letters II, 189. 52 Reinhold, Letters II, 189. 53 Reinhold, Letters II, 188. 54 Kant, CPrR, 5:33. 50 Dr. Jörg Noller LMU Munich own on the part of pure and, as such, practical reason,” whereas for Reinhold freedom “in the positive sense” concerns “the capacity of self-determination by choice (“Willkür”) for or against the practical law”55. In this positive sense of freedom towards the moral law, Reinhold’s original conception of the autonomous subject becomes clear, since it does not necessarily conform to the pure and universal form of reason but finds its individual expression as a both natural and rational being. By separating the capacity of choice from pure practical reason, the free person is in a state of indifference concerning her inclining motives. Here the question arises of how a determined decision can be made out of this indifference to finally lead to an action. According to Reinhold, the will’s determination is realized by “the very specific of will’s action”, that is the “decision” as the “person’s act in willing”56. The danger of equilibrism can be avoided insofar the person is not passively in a state of indifference, but affirms herself in her individuality by distinguishing and correlating both inclining drives—the selfish and the unselfish one—in order to bring them into a determined relation concerning her objectives.57 The problem of a conception of freedom as indifference or equilibrium lies in its “indeterminate concept of will”58 and lacks an analysis of the exact independence of the “self-determination in willing from reason and sensibility”59. According to Reinhold, a free volitional self-determination is by definition not indifferent or neutral towards its alternatives but essentially determined by the use of reason: Whereas the selfish drive represents the faculty of theoretical reasoning in finding instrumental means to an end, the unselfish drive stands for practical reason and its universal law. By choosing between these two drives, and by “satisfying” one of them, freedom realizes itself in a determined use of 55 Reinhold, Letters II, 188. Reinhold, Letters II, 177. 57 Cf. Lazzari (2012), 281 f. 58 Reinhold, Letters II, 190. 59 Reinhold, Letters II, 190. 56 Dr. Jörg Noller LMU Munich reason. Reinhold argues “that willing is more than mere involuntary desire, and that in each condition of mind [in willing] there exists a special action that is called decision and which, by reflection on it, is distinguished from the claim of involuntary desire.”60 What Reinhold distinguishes here can be interpreted in terms of first- and second-order volitions. Will’s subjective reason and subjective determining factor consists in will’s reflection on the basis of merely inclining objective reasons. A person’s individual maxim, as Reinhold puts it, „is the result of choice (“Willkür”) and reason“61, that is a product of a rational volitional operation, and hence, not an indifferent event. Moreover, freedom, according to Reinhold, is “a basic faculty (“Grundvermögen”) […] that cannot be derived from another faculty, and which therefore cannot be apprehended and explained through another”62. Hence, according to Reinhold, “one cannot think of an objective ground of willing”63, without objectifying the subjective nature of individual freedom. A free action, as Reinhold puts it, is “groundless”, insofar as its ground and reason is freedom itself. But this is also the last thinkable reason of that action. It is the absolute, the first cause of its action, over and above one cannot think further, since it really depends on nothing else. To ask: Why did the free will determine itself in this or that way means to ask: Why is it free? Supposing it needed a reason distinct from it means to deny its freedom.64 60 Reinhold, Letters II, 195. Reinhold, Letters II, 191. 62 Reinhold, Letters II, 194. 63 Reinhold, Letters II, 193. 64 Reinhold, Letters II, 193. 61 Dr. Jörg Noller LMU Munich What is the systematic relevance of Reinhold’s reaction to the autonomy problem after Kant? Whereas his theory is not equilibristic, it is, in the final analysis, an epistemologically opaque account. The subjective ground of decision that Reinhold makes use of in order to avoid intelligible fatalism must be inconceivable for otherwise it would be an objective determination of the will of which one could ask for its reason, leading to an infinite regress. Reinhold seems to locate freedom of the will in between objective determinism and groundless indifferentism by introducing his epistemic account of a subjective determining ground. This subjective ground can be interpreted in terms of reasons for actions, since “Grundvermögen” can be translated both as a basic faculty and as a faculty of reasons that do not necessarily conform with the moral law. 6. Did Kant finally hold an “intelligible fatalism”? The importance of Kant’s late Metaphysics of Morals consists in the fact that it provides his final statement about Reinhold’s Dilemma, attempting to clarify the relation between will, power of choice, reason and moral law. For this reason, the concept of the power of choice (“Willkür”) is of special interest. Kant attempts to situate it within his system of transcendental philosophy and to clarify its determining ground. This is a direct reaction to Reinhold’s insisting on the possibility of positive freedom against the moral law. Kant’s final remarks to the autonomy problem can be found in the fourth section of the Metaphysics of morals and encompass roughly one single page.65 They read more like explications or annotations than a genuine theory. However, the fact that these final remarks are very short must not hide the fact that they are of special systematic importance concerning Reinhold’s Dilemma. 65 Kant, MM 6:226 f. Dr. Jörg Noller LMU Munich Like in his Religion, Kant defines individual freedom as a maxim, namely as the “rule that the agent himself makes his principle on subjective grounds”66. Moreover, Kant defines the concept of a deed as an action “insofar as it comes under obligatory laws and hence insofar as the subject, in doing it, is considered in terms of the freedom of his choice (“Willkür”)”67. It is striking that Kant defines the “capacity for desiring in accordance with concepts” as the “capacity for choice” (“Willkür”)68, and not, as he did in his Second Critique, as the “higher volitional capacity” (“höheres Begehrungsvermögen”), that is, pure practical reason.69 At this point, Kant sharply distinguishes between will (“Wille”) and faculty of choice (“Willkür”): The capacity for desire whose inner determining ground, hence even what pleases it, lies within the subject's reason is called the will. The will is therefore the capacity for desire considered not so much in relation to action (as the capacity for choice is) but rather in relation to the ground determining choice to action. The will itself, strictly speaking, has no determining ground; insofar as it can determine the capacity for choice, it is instead practical reason itself70. It follows from this that it is not pure practical reason that immediately produces an action as the principium executionis through the moral feeling of respect; rather, the faculty of the power to choose takes up this intermediate position between will and action. Hence, Kant situates the faculty of choice below the will as a kind of faculty to realize the will in the empirical world.71 66 Kant, MM 6:225 Kant, MM 6:223 68 Kant, MM 6:213 69 Cf. Kant, CPrR 5:24 f. 70 Kant, MM 6:223. 71 Cf. Kant, MM 6:213. 67 Dr. Jörg Noller LMU Munich This definition of the faculty of choice has as a consequence the fact that the will has only a legislative function, whereas the power to execute the will lies in the faculty of choice: “Laws proceed from the will, maxims from choice (“Willkür”).”72 However, since the will “is directed to nothing beyond the law itself, [it] cannot be called either free or unfree, since it is not directed to actions but immediately to giving laws for the maxims of actions (and is, therefore, practical reason itself). Hence the will directs with absolute necessity and is itself subject to no necessitation. “73 It follows that „[o]nly choice (“Willkür”)can […] be called free.”74 This is due to the fact that it can choose the concrete matter of the maxim, whereas the will qua moral law always provides the form to which the faculty of choice can freely refer—a distinction that is likely due to Reinhold’s Dilemma. But how can we make sense of Kant’s statement that the will “cannot be called either free or unfree”? We find further arguments in Kant’s preliminary version (“Vorarbeiten”) to the preface and introduction to the Metaphysics of Morals,75 where he insists on the separation between will (“Wille”) and choice (“Willkür”).76 The will cannot be called free since it is “not under the law but […] itself the legislator for the faculty of choice and […] absolute practical spontaneity determining the faculty of choice.”77 For this reason, the will is “good in all human beings, and there is no unlawful willing”78. The faculty of choice stands under the will, which is the instance of legislation. Insofar as it is not conceptually bound to the moral law, Kant conceives of it as a “natural faculty” whose maxims “since they can refer to actions as appearances in the empirical world can be evil”. As Kant puts it, the faculty of choice is 72 Kant, MM 6:226 Kant, MM 6:226. 74 Kant, RBMR 6:226. 75 Kant, 23:243-252, here 248-250. 76 “Man’s will must be distinguished from the faculty of choice (“Willkür”)”; Kant, 23:248. 77 Kant, 23:248. 78 Kant, 23:248. 73 Dr. Jörg Noller LMU Munich “actually not immediately determinable,” “but only by means of the maxims to use it according or against the moral law”.79 However, a closer look reveals that Kant attributes a specific form of freedom to the will. Whereas the faculty of choice, as a phenomenon, is free to materially decide for or against the moral law, “the will […] is free in another sense since it is lawgiving not obeying neither the law of nature nor another one, and insofar freedom is a positive faculty, however not to choose, since there is no choice, but to determine the subject with regard to the empirical action.”80. Whereas Kant held that only the faculty of choice but not will “can be called free”81, he seems to contradict himself when he declares—obviously alluding to Reinhold’s theory of freedom82—that “freedom of choice cannot be defined—as some [namely Reinhold] have tried to define it—as the capacity to make a choice for or against the law (libertas indifferentiae), even though choice as a phenomenon provides frequent examples of this in experience.”83 How can we make sense of this statement that seems to be—at a first glance—paradoxical? A closer look reveals that Kant does not refer to a conceptual contradiction, as some interpreters have assumed. Rather, both statements on the freedom of the faculty of choice can be understood as compatible if one considers the fact that Kant speaks in a weak sense of “to be called free,” and in a strong sense of “being defined as free”. The reason for Kant’s definitional restriction of the faculty of choice lies in the epistemological limits of his transcendental idealism. Even in his latest works on freedom, Kant struggles to determine the faculty of choice between the realm of the intelligible and the sensible: The freedom of choice “cannot be explained in the sense of being 79 Kant, 23:248. Kant, 23:249. 81 Kant, MM 6:226. 82 Cf. Reinhold, Letters II, 188: “[In] the positive sense it [human freedom] is the capacity to self-determination by choice (“Willkür”) for or against the practical law.” Concerning the question whether Kant refers to Reinhold cf. Bojanowski (2006), 245 f. 83 Kant, MM 6:226. 80 Dr. Jörg Noller LMU Munich the subjective possibility to act according or against the law that is to even decide the unlawfulness of actions since this would be the same as an evil will—this would mean to pull sensibility in the field of the pure faculty of reason [my emphasis].”84 Or, in other words: “The faculty of choice and its subjective law must not be pulled into the subersensible realm.”85 At this point, the question arises of where the subjective law of choice must be located, given Kant’s statements that it does not belong to the realm of the supersensible. It cannot be grounded in heteronomous inclinations, as Kant stressed in his Religion, since this would even make moral imputation impossible.86 However, it also cannot belong to the realm of pure practical reason, which is structurally identical to the moral law: The concept of a deviation from the moral law within the realm of pure practical reason itself would be contradictory. Hence, the fact that “man as a sensible being shows according to experience a capacity to not only act according to, but also against the moral law” means not that “in this way […] his freedom can be defined as an intelligible being.”87 The reason for that consists in the fact that “appearances cannot make any supersensible object (which the free choice is a kind of) intelligible, and that freedom can never be grounded [gesetzt] in a rational subject’s chosing to act against its (lawgiving) reason [my emphasis].”88 An irrational action of the intelligible character is conceptually contradictory so that positive freedom of choice is principally not definable. Therefore, according to Kant, we “cannot comprehend the possibility”89 of such an evil decision. For that reason, we must distinguish between the fact that it is possible “to accept a proposition (on the basis of experience)”—like in the case of an empirical action against the moral law by the natural 84 Kant, 23:248. Kant, 23:249. 86 Kant, RBMR 6:57 Fn. 87 Kant, MM 6:226. 88 Kant, MM 6:226. 89 Kant, MM 6:226. 85 Dr. Jörg Noller LMU Munich faculty of choice—and “to make it the expository principle (of the concept of free choice) and the universal feature for distinguishing it (from arbitrio bruto s. servo)”.90 To make the latter possible, one would have to explain that the possibility to act against the moral law “belongs necessarily to the concept [of the faculty of choice]”91, which is impossible according to Kant’s epistemology. A definition of the free faculty of choice to act against the moral law would be, as Kant stresses, “a hybrid definition [“Bastarderklärung”] (definitio hybrida) that puts the concept in a false light,” insofar it included not essential but empirical and contingent moments within the definition and “added to the practical concept the exercise of it, as this is taught by experience”.92 Given the ‘critical’ position of the faculty of choice within Kant’s transcendental idealism, his thesis that “[o]nly freedom in relation to the internal lawgiving of reason is really a capacity; the possibility of deviating from it is an incapacity” becomes clear. 93 However, the fact that Kant speaks of “incapacity” is not equivalent to “impossibility,” as some interpreters have held. Rather, impossibility means in this context a privative form of the faculty of freedom as the freedom to act morally evil. Insofar as there is no possibility to explain the subjective law of the capacity of choice from the perspective of practical reason, there remains only the possibility to define the morally good, which is extensionally identical to an action out of autonomous reason. This means that Kant’s final conception of autonomy does not entail the strong AP1 but the weaker AP2. However, AP2 does not entail an intelligible fatalism, which would only follow if one understood the epistemic and definitional restriction of the evil capacity of choice 90 Kant, MM 6:226. Kant, MM 6:227. 92 Kant, MM 6:227. 93 Kant, MM 6:227. 91 Dr. Jörg Noller LMU Munich metaphysically.94 Rather, Kant’s epistemological escape from intelligible fatalism consists in the conceptual distinction between incapacity and impossibility of evil actions, the former guaranteeing their logical possibility. Even if Kant avoids intelligible fatalism, his theory of individual freedom remains highly problematic, since a morally evil action seems to be less free than a good one, and, hence, less imputable. In fact, Kant can hardly explain how—on the basis of the moral law—a free agent should be possible to produce an evil action as a sort of practical cognition, as he argued in his Second Critique’s chapter “On the concept of an object of pure practical reason”95. Against such an asymmetric account, the conceptual challenge consists in developing a symmetric concept of freedom according to which good and evil actions are likewise and to the same degree free and imputable. Moreover, the conceptual challenge consists in developing an account of individual freedom that is neither an indifferent occurrence (“indifferentism”) nor a necessarily determined event (“intelligible fatalism” / “empirical determinism”). Since the faculty of choice cannot be identified with pure practical reason—a free decision against the moral law would be a conceptual contradiction—Kant situates it between reason and empirical action. In this way, a decision according to the moral law becomes thinkable: The pure will determines the faculty of choice, which in turn chooses by means of the moral feeling of respect a legal maxim and motivates and realizes it to an action. A decision against the moral law, however, remains utterly incomprehensible in Kant’s theory so that an evil choice must be understood, if not as impossibility, than as incapacity. As a consequence, there 94 Fugate (2015) seems to read Kant in this way: “He [Kant] uses rather the word ‘Unvermögen’ which most certainly means an absence of a power or faculty, or more precisely, an impossibility of acting in a specifically defined way.” (362) 95 Kant, RBMR 6:57-71. Dr. Jörg Noller LMU Munich exists no individual law in Kant’s asymmetrical theory of moral freedom that could explain a free decision against the moral law. Not Kant, however, but Reinhold himself had the final word in the debate. Shortly after the First Part of Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals appeared, Reinhold wrote a reply entitled “Some Remarks about the Concepts of Freedom of the Will, given by Immanuel Kant in the Introduction to the Metaphysical Foundations of the Doctrine of Right”96. In this short text from 1797, Reinhold referred to Kant’s conceptual distinctions given in the Metaphysics of Morals and explained parts of his theory of freedom in greater detail. Thereby, Reinhold focused primarily on the relationship between will and the faculty of choice (“Willkür”). In the Second Volume of his Letters on the Kantian Philosophy, Reinhold had indeed stressed the importance of the capacity of choice but had not further determined its relationship to the concept of will. In his reply from 1797, Reinhold criticizes Kant’s understanding of the freedom to act immorally as an “incapacity”97. Against this asymmetric account of moral freedom, Reinhold argues that the “capacity to act immorally” is “no incapacity but rather the same capacity without which no moral acting can be understood”98. In order to make a person’s freedom to act immorally understandable, Reinhold analyses the relationship between maxims and practical reason in a way that is different from Kant’s. He defines maxims as “rules adopted by the will” that “either conform or dissent with the demand of reason”99. Reinhold’s crucial revision regarding Kant’s conception if will and choice (“Willkür”) consist in the fact that he distinguishes the will from the exclusive relationship with practical 96 „Einige Bemerkungen über die in der Einleitung zu den „Metaphysischen Anfangsgründen der Rechtslehre“ von I. Kant aufgestellten Begriffe von der Freiheit des Willens“, in: Auswahl vermischter Schriften. Zweyter Theil. Ed. by Martin Bondeli and Silvan Imhof. Basel: Schwabe, 141-153. 97 Kant, MM 6:227. 98 Reinhold, Bemerkungen, 153. 99 Reinhold, Bemerkungen, 142. Dr. Jörg Noller LMU Munich reason and the moral law, and relates it with the concept of the power of choice (“Willkür”): “Both the moral law and the maxims presuppose in the will itself the power to choose (“Willkür”). Real choice (“Willkür”) is, as its name suggests, only possible within the will.”100 Hence, Reinhold conceives of the power to choose (“Willkür”) as an internal structure of the will: “The human choice (“Willkür”) is the faculty to choose (“küren”) that is specific for the will.”101 Against Kant, Reinhold stresses the self-reflective feature of the power to choose, which can be described in terms of second order volitions, and distinguishes it from mere first-order desires: “Without the power of choice (“Willkür”) there would be mere desire, indeed modified by reasoning (theoretical reason), but no volition (“Wollen”), no free self-determination with regard to a desire.”102 In doing so, Reinhold situates the faculty to choose above the rationally determined will, and not below it, as Kant did in his Metaphysics of Morals. According to Reinhold, the will, understood in terms of second-order volitions, needs to be distinguished from mere first-order desires by its feature of self-reflexivity. For that purpose, Reinhold distinguishes “the actual willing (“Wollen”) as a decision from the mere desire, which happens with or without decision”103. Both the necessity of pure practical reason as the pure will and empirical determining factors are not to be called free as such. Rather, freedom emerges where a person refers to these first-order volitions by the faculty of choice. Therefore, practical reason must not be confused with the subject of free self-determination: “If practical reason were the will, then either an evil person would have no will, or her practical reason would act evilly, and the moral person could will nothing but the (moral) law.”104 If this were true, then, according 100 Reinhold, Bemerkungen, 142. Reinhold, Bemerkungen, 142. 102 Reinhold, Bemerkungen, 142. 103 Reinhold, Bemerkungen, 143. 104 Reinhold, Bemerkungen, 144. 101 Dr. Jörg Noller LMU Munich to Reinhold, acting evilly would not be an epistemic incapacity (“Unvermögen”), as Kant argued, but rather an metaphysical impossibility (“Unmöglichkeit”).105 7. Conclusion: Reinhold’s practical significance There have been several recent strategies to escape Kant’s identification of freedom and morality that correspond to Reinhold’s critique. In his seminal article “Free Will and the Concept of a Person,” Harry Frankfurt has developed a concept of individual volitional self-determination that explicitly departs from Kant’s account in several crucial regards that Reinhold had pointed to before. Frankfurt argues against an identification of the free person with the Kantian noumenal self: “Kant argues that someone whose conduct is motivated merely by his own personal interests is inevitably heteronomous. What interests a person is a contingent matter, of course, which is determined by circumstances that are outside his control. Kant understands this to entail that personal interests are not integral to the essential nature of a person’s will. In his view, they are volitionally adventitious: they do not depend wholly upon the person’s inherent volitional character, but at least partly upon causes that are logically external to it”106. Contrary to Kant and neo-Kantians like Roderick Chisholm, who attempted to solve the autonomy problem by distinguishing the pure intelligible from the pure empirical self,107 Frankfurt holds that individual freedom does not consist in subordinating the autonomous 105 Reinhold, Bemerkungen, 153. Frankfurt (1994: 436). 107 Chisholm (1982: 33), holds “that this [the Kantian approach to the problem of human freedom] is the one that I would take”, and argues: “If we are […] prime movers unmoved and if our actions, or those for which we are responsible, are not causally determined, then they are not causally determined by our desires.” 106 Dr. Jörg Noller LMU Munich noumenal to the empirical self. Rather he conceives of autonomy as an internal volitional process of reflective self-appropriation on the basis of a person’s individual nature. Against Kant’s conception of a “pure self,” Frankfurt stresses the individuality of the will: “The pure will has no individuality whatsoever. It is identical in everyone, and its volitions are everywhere exactly the same. In other words, the pure will is thoroughly impersonal. The commands that it issues are issued by no one in particular.”108 This allows Frankfurt to avoid the consequences of an intelligible fatalism. To prevent indifferentism as well, Frankfurt attempts to bind such an individual will not to the necessity of pure practical reason, as Kant did before, but to a specific structure of the individual will, which he calls “volitional necessity”109. How does such a “volitional necessity” work in opposition to the necessity of the moral law in Kant that carries the danger of “intelligible fatalism”? Frankfurt develops an account of a reflective will that comprises two levels—first- and second-order desires. First-order desires are like “raw material”, “out of which he [the person] must design and fashion the character and the structure of his will”110. The free will is the result of the process of a formation: “It is these acts of ordering and of rejection—integration and separation—that create a self out of the raw materials of inner life. They define the intrapsychic constraints and boundaries with respect to which a person’s autonomy may be threatened even by his own desires.”111. This means that second-order volitions are not identical to a general capacity of pure practical reason, but to a person’s inner core and fundamental convictions. They are “substantive, rather than merely formal” and “pertain to the purposes, the preferences, and the other personal characteristics that 108 Frankfurt (1994: 436). Frankfurt (1982: 264). 110 Frankfurt (1994: 443). 111 Frankfurt (1987: 39). 109 Dr. Jörg Noller LMU Munich the individual cannot help having and that effectively determine the activities of his will.”112 Contrary to Kant, who held that “a free will and a will under moral laws are one and the same”113, and implicitly following Reinhold, Frankfurt holds that the reasons for a decision must not necessarily be moral reasons. Rather, the “essence of a person” consists in “contingent volitional necessities by which the will of the person is as a matter of fact constrained [my emphasis]”114. In fact, this sort of individual and contingent volitional necessity seems to be an appropriate escape of Reinhold’s Dilemma—beyond indifferentism, intelligible fatalism, and empirical determinism. 112 Cf. Frankfurt (1994: 443). Kant, GMM, 4:447. 114 Cf. Frankfurt (1994: 443). 113 Dr. Jörg Noller LMU Munich References Allison, Henry. 1996. Idealism and Freedom. Essays on Kant’s Theoretical and Practical Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Frankfurt, Harry G. 1971. “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person.” The Journal of Philosophy, 68, 5-20. ——— 1982. “The Importance of What We Care About.” Synthese, 53, 257-272. ——— 1987. “Identification and wholeheartedness.” Ferdinand David Schoeman (ed.) Responsiblity, Character, and the Emotions. New Essays in Moral Psychology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 27-45. ——— 1994. “Autonomy, Necessity and Love.” Hans Friedrich Fulda/Rolf-Peter Horstmann (eds.) 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