Josué de la Place: freedom is exemption from compulsion, from matter, and from sense
This is set out more fully by Josué de la Place, professor at the Academy of Saumur a few years ago, in his treatise On Man's Free Choice. There he sums up what he had argued at length before: "The natural freedom of the will consists in this. Being free of compulsion and of the necessity of matter and of things of sense, it can take as its object, in any place and at any time, things immaterial as well as material, of the intellect as well as of sense, future as well as present, honourable as well as useful or pleasant, and their opposites, in short every order, degree and relation of goods and evils.
"It can choose the final end, the intermediate ends and the means that lead to them as it judges fit, that is, by the judgement of the practical mind. Without that judgement it would not even be rational, let alone free."
Later he repeats, as his own view, that not every necessity clashes with the will, meaning with freedom of choice, but only the necessity that comes from compulsion, or from matter without sense, or from sense without reason. Likewise he says freedom lies in exemption from three necessities: compulsion, being settled by matter, and being settled by sense.
Latin
XI. Quae latius diducta videre licet apud Josuam Placeum ante paucos annos in Academia Salmuriensi Professorem, tractatu de libero hominis Arbitrio. Ubi sic concludit ea quae pluribus ante hac de re disseruit. In eo igitur consistit naturalis voluntatis libertas, quod cum a coactione, & necessitate materiae, & rerum sensibilium sit libera, tam immaterialia quam materialia, tam intelligibilia quam sensibilia, tam futura quam praesentia, tam honesta quam utilia, aut jucunda, horumque contraria, omnes adeo bonorum & malorum ordines, gradus, relationes pro objecto habere possit omni loco & tempore, finem ultimum, fines intermedios, ad eosque conducentia media eligere potest pro arbitrio, hoc est, mentis practicae judicio, sine qua ne rationalis quidem est, nedum libera. Et postea repetit ex sua sententia non omnem necessitatem cum voluntate, id est, cum libertate arbitrii pugnare, sed eam duntaxat quae vel a coactione est, vel a materia sine sensu, vel a sensu sine ratione. Item, libertatem sitam esse in immunitate a triplici necessitate, coactionis nempe, determinationis a materia, & determinationis a sensu.