De libero arbitrio

work by Valla

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June 25, 2026

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Lorenzo Valla's De libero arbitrio ("On Free Will") is a brief dialogue where Valla critiques the philosopher Boethius. Boethius attempted to reconcile human free will with divine foreknowledge. Valla, a humanist and critic of medieval traditions, challenged these established philosophical ideas. His work is part of his broader intellectual project of questioning and reforming existing thought, often by focusing on linguistic clarity and challenging established authorities. This dialogue reflects Valla's tendency to engage in polemical debates and his preference for plain language over philosophical jargon.1

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Lorenzo Valla
In his brief dialogue De libero arbitrio (“On Free Will”), Valla attacked the stoic philosopher Boethius (480–524/525), who had attempted to reconcile man’s free will with God’s foreknowledge; and in his Dialecticae disputationes (“Dialectical Disputations”), Valla reduced Aristotle’s nine “categories” to three (substance, quality, and action, which corresponded to…
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In his brief dialogue De libero arbitrio (“On Free Will”), Valla attacked the stoic philosopher Boethius (480–524/525), who had attempted to reconcile man’s free will with God’s foreknowledge; and in his Dialecticae disputationes (“Dialectical Disputations”), Valla reduced Aristotle’s nine “categories” to three (substance, quality, and action, which corresponded to…
Read More