Two Concepts of Freedom?
591
Nelson Potter, "Does Kant have two Concepts of Freedom?", en G. Funke & J. Kopper,
Akten des 4. ten Internationalen Kant-Kongresses, 1974, 590-96.
Does Kant have Two Concepts of Freedom?
by Nelson Potter, Jr., University of Nebraska
I persons who do not act from duty are responsible for their actions. According to
~e _dtar.ge that ~ant has two concepts of freedom has been made by a number
of d1stm~msh:d crmcs an~ interpreters of Kant through at least the last 80 years.
Henry S1dgw1ck dtarged in an article first printed in 1888 that Kant's doctrine
o~ freedom rests on a e~uivocation. 1 The two senses of "freedom" that Sidgwick
discovers are the followmg: (1) In one sense a man is free only when the moral
law determin~s his action, i. e., only when he acts from duty. Sigdwick cites in
support of this sense of "freedom" passages like the following:
· · ·since the conception of c.ausality involves that of laws ... though freedom is not a
property of the "'."111 depending on physical laws, yet it is not for that reason lawless·
o'.1 the contr~ry, 1t must. be a causality according to immutable laws, but of a peculia;
kmd; otherwise, a free will would be a chimaera.•
~e l~w of this fre: or autonomous will is, Kant goes on to say, the fundamental
prmc1ple of morality, "so that a free will and a will subject to moral laws
ar~ on~ a~d th~ ~ame." 3 On this account the will is free if and only if it is deter-
mined m its w1Ilmg by moral laws. This sense of freedom we can, with Sigdwick
call "good freedom." (2) In the other sense a man is free if he can choose to ac;
rightly or wrongly. If a person chooses to act merely in accord with duty or
contrary to duty, that action is freely chosen in this second sense of «free." This
sense of freedom we can, with Sidgwick, call neutral freedom.
Sidgwick writes of these two conceptions of freedom:
S1:eaking broadly, I may say that, wherever Kant has to connect the notion of Freedom
with tha; of. Moral Responsibility or moral imputation, he, like all other moralists who
have maintained Free W~ll. in ;his con.nection, means (chiefly, but not solely) Neutral
Freedom - Freedom exh1b1ted m choosing wrong as much as in choosing right ... On thc-
other hand, when what he has to prove is the possibility of disinterested obedience to
~aw as such, without th~ intervention of sensible impulses, when he seeks to exhibit the
mdepen~e.nce ~f Re.ason in influencing choice, then in many though not all his statements
~e e_xphc1tly 1den;1?es Freedom w~th thi~ indepen~ence of Reason, and thus clearly
implies the proposmon that a man 1s free m proportion as he acts rationally.'
This equivocation on "freedom" is no mere verbal slip Sidgwick finds for
important parts of Kant's doctrine hang on eadt of the tw~ concepts of fre;dorn
and they cannot be brought into consistency.
On the one hand we have the claim that only action from duty, i. e., only
purely "rational" action, as Sidgwick uses the term, is free. Hence only such
action is in accord with our true character as noumenal bein gs, and expressive of
our true self. According to this conception of freedom only action on a categorical
imperative is free, and all other action is heteronomous. Thus "Good Freedom"
plays a key role in the proof of the claim that all material principles of morality
are heteronomous.
But Kant also needs the conception of neutral freedom if he is to maintain that
the conception of "good freedom," persons acting contrary t o duty would n ot be
free, and therefore presumably not responsible for their actions. But Kant wants
to say that sudt people are responsible for their actions. He therefore needs a con-
ception of "neutral freedom," i. e., a conception of freedom according to whidt
people acting contrary to duty are still acting freely. But Kant cannot make do
with just the concept of "neutral freedom," for, as we hav e just seen, the con-
ception of "good freedom" has an important role to play in the arguments against
material principles of morality.
Thus it appears that Kant needs bath conceptions of freedom as a part of his
theory, since he wants both to argue against material conceptions of morality,
and to say that persons acting contrary to duty are responsible for their actions.
However, these two conceptions of freedom are incompat ible: If an agent acts
contrary to duty, he will be free in the neutral sense and not free in the good
sense. If Kant's doctrine does indeed include two such incompatible conceptions
of freedom, then his doctrine of freedom equivocates at a cent ral, important
point. And if Sidgwick is correct, he has put forward a serious criticism, not just
of Kant's doctrine of freedom, but perhaps also of the main arguments that Kan t
advances against material principles of morality. These arguments are import ant
in the defense of Kant's claim that the supreme principle of mora lity is a formal
principle.
II
In two important works on Kant's ethics by major scholars, both of which
appeared in 1960, Sidgwick's criticism is accepted as an account of the doctrine
of freedom as it was put forward by Kant in the Grundlegung, and p erhaps also
in the Critique of Practical Reason.5 But, it is added by both of these writers,
that in Kant's later works on moral philosophy, in particular Religion within the
Limits of Reason Alone and the Metaphysics of Morals, this equivocation is
resolved with the introduction of Kant's distinction between Wille (will) and
Willkiir (choice, or faculty of dtoice). In the earlier work s "Wille" was used to
stand for both the will and the faculty of choice; in the later works, "Wille" is
pure practical reason, the source of objective moral laws, and "Willkiir" is the
592 N. Potter
faculty of choice, by which we choose whether we shall follow the directives of
Wille or those of the senses. The equivocation on freedom noted by Sidgwi&. is
then said to be resolved as follows: Wille is said to be free in the positive sense,
and Willkur in the neutral sense.
Lewis White Be&. in his Commentary on Kant's Critique of Practical Reason,
writes,
In the Critique of Practical Reason, the concept of will, which has freedom as its attribute,
is equivocal ... The Critique is the meeting place of two different, but not explicitly
distinguished, conceptions of the will and its freeedom, one of which comes chiefly from
the Critique of Pure Reason, the other of which is a heritage from the Foundations . .
From the Critique of Pure Reason there is inherited the concept of freedom as spontaneity
[Sidgwi~'s "neutral freedom"] ... From the Foundations there is taken the concept of
freedom as autonomy, as lawgiving, and hence as independence from any pregiven law.
The two faculties are generally called by one name, "will", and discussed under the name
of one problem, that of "freedom of the will". Only later did Kant give the reader any
help in distinguishing between them, when he "officially" called the former faculty W ill-
kur and the latter Wille.•
He comments on the relation of these two "faculties" of the will to each other,
saying,
Through submission to [Wille], Willkur supplements its negative freedom with a positive
freedom which comes from submission to its own idealized nature as purely rational
will ... But we must never suppose that there are two faculties related to each other in-
some external, coercive way. There is only one, but it has prima facie two kinds of free-
dom, though one of them will eventually be shown to be the perfection or logical form
of the other.'
This last statement seems to be a promise to give an account of Kant's doctrine
of the will as a unitary faculty. Beck attempts to redeem this promise in the
following passage:
... [A] free, i. e., spontaneous, Willkiir, when it u good, is determined by a free, i. e.,
autonomous, Wille, or pure practical reason, which gives it a law. It can obey only this
law without jeopardy to its freedom. Indeed, it gains In freedom, by now being an auto-
nomous as well as a spontaneous will. Thus is added to the negative concept of free<iom
(spontaneous independence of foreign laws) the positive concept of freedom (autonomous
self-legislation).'
But although Be&. has here striven mightily to bring forth a unitary account
of the will and of freedom, it is apparent that Be&. is still speaking here of two
distinct conceptions of freedom, not one; the unitary account has not been
achieved.
John Silber states the Sidgwickian dilemma of Kant's earlier moral philosophy
clearly:
When Kant argues, as he did in the Groundwork, that by rejecting the law the moral
agent ceases to be free and loses his personality, he can indeed demonstrate that the law
is an essential condition of personal existence. On this view the repudiation of the law
Two Concepts of Freedom? 593
involves the repudiation of oneself. But this view, as we have noted, makes the imputation
of guilt impossible. Overcoming this difficulty in the second Critique by defining
heternomy as a mode of freedom, Kant faced the dismaying consequence that a person
is still a person in possession of his freedom even if he rejects the law.'
Silber also notes Kant's later introduction of the distinction between Wille and
Willkur, as an important and needed sophistication of his theory of the will and
of freedom. He thinks that Kant's conception of the will prior to the Religion was
insufficiently complex to account for our moral experience.
The capital importance of the Religion in Kant's ethics consists in the fact that the
Religion offers us his own sustained analysis of the human will - an analysis which
resolves several of these problems and removes many of the superficiailities involved in
his earlier statements. Willkiir is analyzed in the Religion as a unitary faculty in which
·the forces of sensibility and rationality have a common meeting place. It thus provides
the basis for an understanding of the experience of obligation as the constraint of the
law upon a will tempted to reject it. 11
But although Silber thus strongly insists that Kant's final account of the will and
of freedom brings to a new unity the earlier diverse strands of each conception,
he does not explain just how this new unity is obtained or what it is.
It was doubtless an advance for Kant to distinguish Wille and Willkur from
each other, and thereby, in effect, to give distinct names to the two distinct kinds
of freedom that Sidgwi&. noted. We might say that Kant was no longer equivoc-
ating on the conception of freedom. He had in effect marked the two distinct
conceptions, and distinguished them by naming two distinct faculties or functions
of the will.
But our old question, "What is the relation between Kant's two conceptions of
freedom?" has thereby simply been supplanted by a new one, "What is the
relation between the faculties of Wille and Willkur?" This new quest ion is as
puzzling and troublesome as the old one. And Be&. and Silber, though they say
that Kant has a conception of the will as unitary, do not explain how these
distinct faculties or functions do form such a unity.
Further, Kant has aimed to prove that the will is free, in the Grundlegung
and the second Critique; the kind of freedom he therein attributes to the will is
"good freedom." If "neutral freedom" is a distinct kind of freedom, and, indeed,
according to Kant's later account, a freedom of a distinct faculty or funct ion
of the will [W illkurJ, then how are we to justify this additional claim that Willkur
possesses neutral freedom? If there really do remain two and not one conceptions
of freedom and two and not one faculties or functions of the will, then Sidgwi&.'s
problem remains a problem. Be&. and Silber should have either given an account
of the will [WillkurJ, then how are we justify this additional claim that Willkiir
dom, or they should have shown that Kant did not have two conceptions of
freeedom, as Sidgwick had said, but only one. In fact, they have done neither
thing.
594 N. Potter
At best, then, Kant's introduction of the Wille!Willkiir distinction in his later
works served only to make Sidgwick's problem more explicit, and Beck and Silber
have restated the problem rather than solving it.
III
In fact, Sidgwick is wrong; Kant does not have two distinct conceptions of
freedom. He has a single conception of freedom, at least in his later works of the
critical period, and in terms of this single conception we can understand both
(a) Kant's arguments against material principles of morality, and (b) how it is
possible that a man acting contrary to duty is responsible for his actions. That is,
we can account for both what Sidgwick calls the good conception and the neutral
conception of freedom .
Kant states his definition of freedom in the Metaphysics of Morals: "The
positive concept of freedom is that of the power of pure reason to be of itself
practical."11 This may look like the old definition of positive or good freedom ;
pure reason, in Kant's view, is "of itself practical" only when the agent acts out
of purely moral considerations, i. e., from the motive of duty. Thus it might
seem that, once again, an agent acting contrary to duty would lack freedom in this
sense, and hence not be responsible for his actions. But this is not so, for a person
acting contrary to duty possesses still the "power of pure reason to be of itself
practical." The important word is "power" (Vermogen). Kant later comments on
this definition:
Some have tried to define freedom of choice as the power to choose between the alter-
natives of acting with or against the law (libertas indifferentiae). But freedom of choice
cannot be defined in this way, although the power of choice as phenomenon gives frequent
examples of this in experience ... Only freedom with regard to the inner legislation of
reason is really a power: the possibility of deviating from legislative reason is a lack of
power. How, then, can this possibility be used to define freedom? 11
This discussion makes it clear that possession of freedom of choice is not in-
compatible with action contrary to duty. This squares the present definition with
Sidgwick's conception of "neutral freedom," for according to the conception of
neutral freedom we are free and hence responsible with respect to actions contrary
to duty. It also squares with Sidgwick's conception of "good freedom," for,
except for the addition of he phrase "the power of", it replicates Sidgwick's
account of that conception. Kant's definition of freedom can also be used to argue
against material principles of morality; for it is only when we act for the sake
of purely formal considerations of duty that this power of pure reason to be
practical is exemplified.
Thus Sidgwick's charges are unjustified; Kant does not equivocate on the
concept of freedom. He has a single concept of freedom, which he offers in an
unnoticed passage in the Metaphysics of Morals.
Two Concepts of Freedom? 595
It might be wondered whether, since the definition comes from the Metaphysics
of Morals, Kant also held to the same conception of freedom in his earlier moral
works. This question cannot be answered conclusively, since Kant does not state
the Metaphysics of Morals definition in these earlier works. But if we interpolate
this definition into the spaces where the word "freedom" occurs in these earlier
works, we encounter little or no difficulty. By this test, the Metaphysics of Morals
definition certainly could have been the concept of freedom that Kant was using
from the beginning.
What is the importance of the distinction between Wille and W illkur, a distinct-
ion that appears only in Kant' later works on moral philosophy, the Religion
and the Metaphysics of Morals? It is a clarification of Kant's conception of the
will, distinguishing as it does the function of pure practical reason influncing the
agent's choice (Wille) from the function of choice itself (Willkur), which might or
might not be in accord with pure practical reason. The distinction is a useful
and an important one for Kane's moral psychology, but it has little connection
with Kant's account of freedom .
But aren't there passages in the Grundlegung in which Kant seems to under-
stand freedom, not as the faculty or power of pure reason to be practical, but as
the will simply determined by pure practical reason? Yes, Kant does there often
seem to identify freedom with the will's being determined by duty, rather than
with the will's power of being determined by duty. 1 3 But the explanation for this
may be, not that Kant had there a different conception of freedom, but that Kant
was there often speaking of "rational beings as such" rather than of individual
human beings. It is reasonable to suppose that the following propositions are
compatible: (a) Rational beings as such cannot act contrary to duty. (b) Human
beings in fact act contrary to duty. If this is correct, then many of th: pass~ges
in Kant which identify freedom with being determined by moral considerations
can perhaps be understood as statements about rational beings as such, and th.ese
passages will be consistent with the definition of freedom as the power of acung
out of purely moral considerations.
Finally, it may be noted that Kant, in defining freedom in terms of the pow~r
of choosing out of purely moral considerations, is saying that an agent lS
responsible for his choices if he could have chosen otherwise. Since in Kant's view
it is always in our power to choose to do what is morally required, from the
motive of duty, we are always morally responsible for our choices. What is unique
about the purely rational moral motivation is that it is not an empirical motivat-
ion, which might or might not be present to move us to choose rightly. It is an
a priori, necessary motivation, on which it is always possible for us to have based
our choice. Hence we are, in Kant's view, always responsible for our choices, for
i~ is always true we could have chosen otherwise.
596 N. Potter

1
In an article, "The Kantian Conception of Free Will," printed as an appendix to his
Me:hods of Ethics (seventh edition, 1907, reissued in 1962 by: Chicago, University of
Chicago Press. pp. 511-516. The article originally appeared in Mind 1888 Vol. XIII
No. 51. ' ' '
• Quoted by Sidgwidt, Ibid., p. 514. The passage is from Kant's Grundlegung, IV, I1 »Regno dei Fini« come Ideale Regolativo
446-447. (l~eferences to Kant's work~ are given by citing the volume and page of
the passage m Kants Gesammelte Schnften, 22 volumes, Berlin: Koniglich Preussisdie e come Struttura Trascendentale
Akademie der Wissensdiaften, 1902-1942. Most English translations include this
pagination in the margins.) di Armando Rigobello, Universita di Perugia
• Grundlegung, IV, 447.
' Sidgwidt, Ibid., p. 513.
•The two works are Lewis White Bed>:., A Commentary on Kant's Critique of Practical
!?--eason (Chicago: Univ~rsity of Chicago Press, 1960) and John Silber, a long essay
1. Rapporto tra costitutivita e regolativita nella ,.Critica della ragion pura«
introductory to an English translation of Kant's Religion within the Limits of Reason Uno dei punti focali per una interpretazione della filosofia kantiana e la
Alone, enticled "The Ethical Significance of Kant's Religion." (New York: Harper precisazione de! rap porto tra la funzione costitutiva della struttura analitica
Tordibooks, 1960). del trascendentale e la funzione regolativa che l'idea di Dio assolve nei confronti
' Beck, op. cit., pp. 176-177. del processo di unificazione qualificante la funzione costitutiva stessa. Quella
1
Ibid., p. 180. e
..determinazione completa« che costituisce l'ideale della conoscenza, che appunto
' Ibid., pp. 198-199. )'idea di Dio, in quale rapporto si pone nei confronti delle determinazioni in-
• Silber, op. cit., p. lxxxv. complete cui le varie sintesi a-priori danno luogo?
'" 1bid., pp. cxxvii-cxxviii.
11
Metaphysics of Morals, VI, 213-214.
e
Una prima risposta decisamente negativa: tra l'ideale regolativo e l'effettiva
sintesi conoscitiva trascendentale non si istaura alcun rapporto. La determinazione
u Metaphysics of Morals, VI, 226-227.
tipica della sintesi a-priori e incompleta solo se considerata dal punto di vista di
u For example, see the passage above from the Grundlegung, IV, 446-447. It was quoted
at the beginning of this essay. una conoscenza esaustiva, omnicomprensiva, ideale trascendentale ed insieme
trascendentale illusione del pensiero umano. Dai punto di vista della sua interna
struttura, il risultato del giudizio trascendentale determinante e, invece, r igoro-
samentc compiuto; non attcnde alcuna ulteriore integrazione.1 Vi e l'impossibilita
di rapporto tra un quid regolativo e una struttura costitutiva, ossia e impossibile
un'attivita regolativa nei confronti di cio che e strutturalmente compiuto. Se cio
che e regolativo e condizione di cio che e costitutivo, si cade nella contraddizione
(almeno nell'ambito del pensiero kantiano) di porre una condizione a cio che a
e e
sua volca condizione. La »condizione della condizione« espressione priva di
senso riducendosi ii rapporto all'unica dimensione della condizione.2 Si noti
e
inoltre come l'impossibilita de! rapporto risulti anche dal fatto che l'ideale un
contenuto, un'idea, mentre la sintesi a-priori e una struttura. Se d'altra parte si
considera l'ideale regolativo sotto il profilo non tanto del contenuto quanto della
funzione, allora il discorso ritorna ad essere quello della condizione della condi-
zione. II problema quindi di un rapporto tra costitutivita e r egolativid sembra
essere, almeno sul terreno teorico, uno pseudo-problema.
Questa conclusione apre comunque un'altra questione molto ardua: se la nostra
conosccnza giace entro i limiti invalicabili della analicica trascendentale, donde
viene l'istanza ideale? Quale giustificazione per la funzione regolativa? Ci tro-
viamo di fronte, anche in sede teoretica, ad un •male radicale« che investe l'at-
tivita conoscitiva umana restringendo la sua validita a livello fenomenico. Del