  Ibn Daud’s approach to the question of free will is not without serious difficulties. Firstly, his conception of evil as privation and as associated with matter conflicts with his initial conception of matter as a substance. Secondly, on the one hand, Ibn Daud argues that it is the intellect that chooses between good and evil, yet he also claims that the choice is a matter of man’s heart, without explaining how these two notions relate. Finally, he has nothing to say on the possibility of “repentance”, which seems to imply that man is determined as it were by his own first choice.