Moral Evil and Freedom According to Peter Olivi

In questions 40 and 41 of his Quaestiones in secundum librum sententiarum, vol. I, Peter Olivi provides an interesting refutation of the conception of freedom and the human capacity to do evil that St. Anselm defends in several of his works. While his aim is to explain what allows him to allow him to ensure the validity of his essentially voluntarist doctrine of free will against possible objections inspired by the texts of the Bishop of Canterbury, Olivi's argumentation is philosophically interesting in that it highlights the positive aspect of the capacity to sin. The article presents a systematic exposition of Olivi's critique in order to reconstruct this remarkable way to understand an important aspect of the problem of the origin of moral evil.