Knowledge of Freedom in the Immediate Reception of Kant: The Curious Case of K.L. Reinhold

K.L. Reinhold is generally taken to assert immediate knowledge of free will. I argue for a novel reading of Reinhold’s epistemology of freedom, based on the methodological distinction between common human understanding and philosophizing reason. For Reinhold, the philosophical justification of the proposition that we possess free will is based on consciousness of the moral law, and therefore is not a baldly asserted fact. This philosophical justification involves tracing the «facts» of moral self-consciousness to their transcendental grounds. I conclude by showing that Reinhold’s position is characteristic of the late German Enlightenment.