ABSTRACT
As the foundation for a relatively "popular" work on the normative content of the system of morality (the Metaphysics of Morals), the Groundwork does not presuppose the arguments of the Critique of Pure Reason (though the particular concerns of Groundwork III and the terms in which they are articulated are thoroughly rooted in the first Critique). This fact explains much of what is puzzling about Groundwork III. The central aim of the argument is to establish the actuality of freedom in us (and thus in all rational beings). As Kant says at the close of the first section of Groundwork III, we need a deduction of freedom. But given this, the equivalence claim can in no way be brought to bear to show the real possibility of freedom unless in showing the moral law's necessary constitutive relation to freedom, freedom is shown to have, through that relation, real possibility.
