This is an excellent book on an extraordinarily interesting topic: the flourishing of philosophical thought concerning free will during the golden century of medieval philosophy that begins around the middle of the thirteenth century.
Over the last several decades, leading scholars in the field have produced careful studies of how one or another of the great figures of the era understands free will, but there is a remarkable amount of disagreement about even the most basic questions of interpretation. This suggests that we may not yet have a clear understanding of the basic contours of the medieval debate. Instead, there is reason to fear, we may be imposing competing modern intuitions about free will onto these old texts. Hoffmann’s book is in this regard an important step forward. Instead of looking with microscopic detail at any one author, it aims for a comprehensive grasp of the broader debate, covering not...
