The chapter explores in the nature of the act of the will Kant analyses in Groundwork I and II. I argue that Kant provides us with a metaphysical – and not phenomenological – analysis of what it means to have a will. The phenomenological analysis is subject to skeptical challenges. His argument is based on what follows when we take ourselves as having a will, something that we do every time we act. This analysis reveals that the act of willing immediately implies a subjection to the moral law. This act of the will is identical to the fact of reason with which Kant begins his second Critique. I show this through a closer look at what follows when we take the will as negatively free, that is, as not determined in the order of causes. I argue that Kant held that when we examine the essence of the will, it follows that any act of willing that is negatively free must also have a law of its activity, one supplied by reason, for the idea of an undetermined will contains a contradiction (6:35). Hence any act of the will must embody both negative and positive freedom. This means further that Kant is an internalist about reasons for moral action.

This chapter provides a short overview of the secondary literature concerning this problem, in particular both “reversal” and “deflationary” readings of Kant’s project. It introduces the basic strategy of the argument of the book, namely that Kant’s analysis in the first part of Groundwork III does not move from the conditions of thinking to freedom of the will, but rather from the conditions of willing to the conditions of thinking: The “I will” implies the “I think” and as such all of the conditions of thinking. Several possible objections are refuted at the outset in order to provide a clear context for the chapters that follow, and the content of each of the following chapters is summarized.