After almost two hundred years, the perplexity expressed by Kant's astute critic, Hermann Andreas Pistorius, is still widely shared. How can both an empirical and an intelligible character be ascribed to a single agent? How can one and the same action be conceived both as causally determined by the antecedent state of the agent and extrinsic factors and as a “new beginning,” the product of the spontaneity of the agent?

The present chapter attempts to deal with this problem by focusing on the distinction between the two types of character as it is depicted in the Critique of Pure Reason. Contrary to many interpreters, I shall argue that Kant is there concerned to provide a transcendental framework for a unified theory of rational agency, one that includes but is not limited to moral agency. Accordingly, although I shall refer to these texts on occasion, the modifications of his theory resulting from an exclusive focus on the moral dimension of agency in the Critique of Pure Reason and Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (specifically, the account of Gesinnung) will be reserved for the second part of this study.