Francesco Botturi
Contemporary philosophy of freedom seems to ignore the great philosophical debate that has gone along with the history of the idea of freedom and its fundamental crises in thelate medieval voluntarism and in modern determinism, since Hobbes. Voluntarism and modern determinism on opposite sides converge in identifying the idea of freedom with free will. On the contrary, the great classical tradition (top of which the author considers Plotin, St. Thomas, Kant, and Fichte) places the basic meaning of freedom respectively in self-possession, self-motivation, autonomy. Without this basic meaning, it is impossible to save free will.