ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on freedom of choice. It outlines the most characteristic and influential Latin medieval theories and discusses a few exemplary ones in detail. Peter Lombard also handed on to later medieval theologians Bernard’s teaching on the three kinds of freedom. At first, Aristotelian ideas only enriched the traditional inquiry about the definition of free decision, but gradually they transformed the entire approach to the problem of freedom. Philip offers a definition of freedom that applies analogously not only to the freedom of free decision (that is, freedom from coercion), but also to freedom from sin and from misery: “not to undergo any deficiency except by one’s own consent.” Aquinas develops systematically the idea expressed less explicitly by Albert and Bonaventure that free decision, that is, the freedom to choose among alternatives, follows upon knowledge of universals and desire for the universal good.
