Sebastiano Belleggia is a second-year Ph.D. student in Classical Studies. His research interests include logic, metaphysics and natural sciences in the broad context of ancient philosophy, particularly in Aristotle and his exegetes from Late Antiquity to Middle Ages.
He was admitted to the Scuola Normale Superiore in 2016, where he attended classes up until 2021. In the meantime, he has earned a B.A. in Philosophy (2016-2019), an M.A. in Philosophy (2019-2021) and an M.A. in Classics (2021-2022) at the University of Pisa.
In his research on Aristotle’s zoology and taxonomy, Sebastiano rejects the widely held scholarly view that Aristotle did not develop (and did not intend to develop) any classification of animals. Against this, he argues that Aristotle’s biological works contain clear evidence for a well-articulated taxonomy, which seemingly anticipates some important features of modern taxonomy, such as the absence of fixed taxonomic ranks and the distinction between analogous and homologous traits.
In his M.A. thesis in Philosophy, he studied Aristotle’s category theory and its relevance for both semantics and ontology, dealing especially with the so-called four-fold classification of beings in Categories 2 and arguing that, although usually dismissed, Andronicus of Rhodes’ interpretation of this passage is probably correct: in these lines Aristotle is conducting a further examination of the notion of paronymy, which he will then use to describe and differentiate essences, qualia, and qualities.