Freedom of choice בחירה חופשית

Rambam puts it most sharply: permission is given to every man; if he wishes he goes the good way, if he wishes the evil, and there is no one pulling him by the hand. If God predetermined a man, everything would collapse: there would be nothing to demand, nothing to judge, no reason to give the Torah.

The contradiction. It is obvious and is stated outright: He knows beforehand—so could it have been otherwise? Rabbi Akiva sets both halves side by side without joining them: "all is foreseen, and permission is given." Rambam explains that His knowledge is not of our kind and so cannot be compared—and admits himself that this does not explain it to the end. The Raavad writes in the margin, plainly, that Rambam has not solved the question.

Where the boundary lies. "All is in the hands of heaven except the fear of heaven": the circumstances are given—health, country, century, parents; the choice remains in what to do within them. The mussar movement made a whole science of this: work not on the world but on that narrow place where the choice is really yours.

And Pharaoh. The verse "and the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart" is discussed at length by the rishonim precisely because it seems to contradict this rule; the common answer is that choice is not taken away for nothing but is worn out by one's own deeds.