by Rodrigo Ballon Villanueva
Davide Falessi
May 2023 – This May we go back to Switzerland to introduce you to Davide Falessi! Davide is a PhD student in a joint programme at the University of Lucerne and the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris (France). He was awarded both a BA (2019) and an MA (2021) in Philosophy by the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa (Italy). His main interests lie in the relationship between logic and metaphysics in medieval Latin philosophy, with a special focus on the 14th century. In this sense, Davide began his research by considering both realist and nominalist theories of continuity and their use of modal logic to account for the ontological status of indivisibles and continuous quantities.
Davide’s doctoral dissertation is titled ‘On the Several Senses of Being in Late Medieval Philosophy’. It is developed within the framework of the SNSF-funded project ‘Senses of Being. The Medieval Receptions of Aristotle’s Doctrine Starting from Metaphysics V 7 (1017 a7-b9)’, directed by Prof. Giovanni Ventimiglia. Davide seeks to delineate the reception of Aristotle’s theory of four senses of being (being per accidens, being per se, being as truth, and being as actuality and potentiality) in the 14th century, by focusing on Latin commentaries on the Metaphysics. Furthermore, he will examine the possible application of such a fourfold distinction in different metaphysical contexts, such as the distinction between essence and existence or the nature of privations.
IPM Monthly 