rectitude of will for the sake of that rectitude itself.” From the point of view of contemporary metaphysics, this is one of the most unhelpful definitions imaginable. Does such freedom require alternative possibilities, for example? Is it compatible with causal determination? Is the exercise of such freedom a necessary and sufficient condition for moral responsibility? The definition sheds no light on these questions. And so we need to move on from Anselm’s definition to Anselm’s account of freedom. Here, though, we encounter the opposite problem. Where Anselm’s definition seems not to answer these questions at all, Anselm’s account seems to answer all these questions sometimes with a yes and sometimes with a no. Consider the question about alternative possibilities. In De libertate arbitrii, Anselm seems clearly to deny that freedom involves alternative possibilities. God, the good angels, and the blessed dead cannot do otherwise than preserve rectitude, but they are still free—freer, in fact, than those who are capable of abandoning 4 rectitude. On the other hand, in De casu diaboli Anselm seems to require alternative possibilities for freedom. For if an angel is to be just, Anselm says, he must have both the power to will rectitude and the power to will happiness. If only one power were given him, he 1 References to Anselm are given as follows: DV=De veritate, DLA=De libertate arbitrii, DCD=De casu diaboli, DC=De concordia, and CDH=Cur Deus Homo. W henever we quote a text we give a reference to the critical edition of F. S. Schmitt, S. Anselmi Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi Opera Omnia (Stuttgart-Bad Canstatt: Friedrich Fromann Verlag, 1968), identified as ‘S’; and to the English translations in Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works, ed. Brian Davies and G. R. Evans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), identified as ‘O’. All translations are our own.