 The distinction between the normative and the factual and the question how the two realms are related also structure Windelband’s reflections on human freedom. Throughout his intellectual career, Windelband returns to this problem, presenting different strategies for reconciling causal determinism and human freedom. His dissertation, completed under Lotze in 1870, deals with the concepts of chance, causal necessity, and freedom. At that time, Windelband still embraces the Kantian concept of transcendental freedom, according to which the noumenal self is the uncaused cause of all intentional action (1870: 16–19). But after the 1877 essay, which had uncovered the anti-metaphysical rejection of the thing-in-itself in Kant’s “third phase” as the radical starting point for the “philosophy of values”, Kant’s metaphysical solution to the problem of freedom ceased to convince him.