Melisso

Melissus (mid or late 5th century bc)

Melissus was a Greek philosopher from the island of Samos. A second-generation representative of Eleatic metaphysics, he published one work, entitled On Nature or On That-Which-Is, which has been partially reconstructed by editors. It defends a version of Parmenides’ monism, but recast with terminology and arguments directly accessible to a readership schooled in the eastern Greek (Ionian) style of physical speculation, as distinct from Parmenides’ western Greek background. Although it is uncertain how important Melissus was to his own contemporaries, his prosaic but clear presentation of Eleatic concepts was more widely adopted by later writers than the enigmatic pronouncements of Parmenides.

Melissus argues that that-which-is is: (1) omnitemporal; (2) infinite in extent; (3) one; (4) homogeneous; (5) changeless, that is, without (a) reordering, (b) pain, (c) grief or (d) motion; (6) indivisible; and (7) bodiless. Here (1) – ‘it always was what it was, and always will be’ – is a departure from Parmenides, who had outlawed past and future in favour of a static present. Likewise (2) contrasts with Parmenides’ defence of spatially finite being. The remaining predicates are consonant with Parmenides, although (5)b–c suggest that the being Melissus has in mind is a living one, presumably a deity – an aspect not brought out by Parmenides. Melissus wrote ‘If there were many things, they ought to be such as I say the One is’ – a remark sometimes thought to have inspired his contemporaries the atomists.

 

1 Life and work

In his own day, Melissus may have won greater renown as an admiral than as a philosopher. The one firm date in his life is 441 bc, when he led the navy of his native Samos to victory over an Athenian fleet commanded by Pericles. Since his age at the time is unknown, the date of his book might be placed anywhere between 490 and 390 bc. One very suspect source makes his philosophy already known to the Athenian politician Themistocles, who died c.462 bc. But the Epicurean Colotes, in a work which after criticizing its principal target Democritus turned the attack onto a further eight philosophers in apparently chronological order, placed Melissus after Socrates, who was active c.440–399 bc, a clue which would bring his floruit well into the second half of the fifth century – late enough for him to have read Empedocles, Anaxagoras and perhaps even the atomists. The tradition that he studied under Parmenides is not particularly trustworthy, although it cannot be doubted that Parmenides was the dominant influence on his philosophy.

A number of verbatim fragments of his one book have been preserved by Simplicius. They can be pieced together with the help of Simplicius’ ancillary paraphrase and another in the Peripatetic treatise On Melissus, Xenophanes and Gorgias.

 

 

2 Philosophical aims

Melissus’ treatise is a methodical defence of Eleatic monism, written in unadorned Ionian prose. The conclusions are by and large Parmenidean, but the arguments are not. There is virtually no sign of Parmenides’ most characteristic argument against change – that it would entail not-being, an altogether inapplicable concept (see Parmenides §§2–4). Instead, Melissus relies on the barely controversial premise ‘Nothing could ever come to be out of nothing’ (fr. 1). Furthermore, whereas Parmenides had in the main inferred each predicate of that-which-is by an independent argument, nearly all Melissus’ inferences form a single chain, with each predicate inferred directly from the previous one.

Melissus is not interested in Parmenides’ highly refined mode of investigation through the logic of being. He writes as a physical thinker addressing a like-minded audience, and expounds the Eleatic One with arguments appropriate to Ionian cosmology. His title (probably authentic, despite some scholars’ hesitation), On Nature or On That-Which-Is [’on nature’ in Greek is physis], in effect announces that this is to be an Eleatic physics. His departures from Parmenides, in reverting to ordinary temporal language and in postulating a spatially infinite being, are more symptomatic of this project than of intellectual independence.

 

 

3 Temporal and spatial infinity

For the book’s beginning we have a probably complete text. It opens as follows: ‘It always was what it was, and always will be. For if it came to be, it is necessary that before it came to be there [or ‘it’] was nothing. Well if there [or ‘it’] was nothing, nothing could ever come to be out of nothing’ (fr. 1). ’Since, then, it did not come to be, it both is and always was and always will be’ (fr. 2, beginning).

Unlike Parmenides’ highly paradoxical rejection of not-being, Melissus’ opening move would be unsurprising to an audience familiar with earlier Ionian cosmologists in the tradition of Anaximander (§2), thinkers whose fundamental tenet had been the permanent existence of an underlying stuff. The commonly assumed causal (rather than ontological) principle ‘Nothing could ever come to be out of nothing’ was its basis. Equally unsurprising in an Ionian context (see Heraclitus, fr. 30) is Melissus’ expression of this permanence in terms of omnitemporality, where Parmenides had chosen to collapse past and future into the present. It is probably misleading to call this a significant philosophical disagreement. Melissus is simply translating Parmenidean thought into the philosophical language which his audience speaks.

As in Parmenides, the rejection of past generation is not followed up with an explicit defence of future imperishability. This is assumed to follow by parity of reasoning. The ground this time would be that ‘nothing could perish into nothing’.

In the following part of fragment 2 Melissus moves on from temporal to spatial infinity. (This clear division has been widely missed by scholars who have supposed that the new argument must start at the beginning of fragment 2.): ‘And it has no [spatial] beginning or end, but is infinite. For if it had come to be it would have a [spatial] beginning (for it would have begun the process of coming-to-be at some time) and end (for it would have ended the process of coming-to-be at some time). But since it neither began nor ended [the process], and always was and always will be, it has no [spatial] beginning or end’.

The interpretation of this has been much debated. Critics from Aristotle on have detected the fallacious inference ‘If p, q; but not-p; therefore not-q’. To see why this is unfair, it is crucial to appreciate that, where Parmenides’ arguments had evidently addressed an audience accustomed to the concept of a finite universe (see Parmenides §3), Melissus assumes the opposite – that the universe will be infinite unless it can be shown to be otherwise. This is yet another sign of his audience’s background in Ionian physics, where the infinity of the universe, prefigured as early as Anaximander, was by Melissus’ day enshrined in Anaxagoras’ cosmology and on its way to becoming central to atomism (see Anaxagoras §2; Atomism, Ancient.

Melissus’ question is: what could have set bounds on that-which-is? If nothing, then it is infinite. Only one thing could have made it finite, and that is a process of generation. Since any generative process would have to be temporally bounded, it could only have produced a spatially finite being. You cannot create an infinitely large entity, any more than you can build an infinitely long road, given only that any such process must start at some time (and hence somewhere) and stop at some time (and hence somewhere). Since, therefore, it has already been demonstrated that that-which-is never came to be, there is nothing to limit it spatially, and it becomes infinite by default.

Having demonstrated first its temporal and then its spatial infinity, Melissus adds how the latter is both inferentially dependent on and parallel to the former: ‘For what is not all would not be able to be always’ (end of fr. 2). ‘But just as it is always, so too it must also always be infinite in magnitude’ (fr. 3). ‘Nothing is either omnitemporal or infinite if it has a [spatial?] beginning and end’ (fr. 4).

The first sentence is particularly obscure. Melissus is perhaps drawing once again on a common assumption of Ionian material monism, that only the underlying stuff of the universe, taken as a whole, is everlasting, while the individual portions of it which constitute animals etc. (if there are any, Melissus would add) are temporary. Therefore the entity which Melissus calls everlasting must be the whole of what there is. This, if not a sufficient condition of its being infinite, he clearly regards as a necessary condition.

 

4 Changeless unity

That-which-is is called ‘the One’ by Melissus, a new emphasis on unity only weakly prefigured in Parmenides. In fragment 6 Melissus formally infers its unity from its spatial infinity: ‘For if there were two they would not be able to be infinite, but would have boundaries in relation to each other’. Oneness here appears to mean uniqueness, and unfortunately it is hard to find any reading of the preceding arguments for its infinity which does not already assume that there is just one of it. A further objection made by the Peripatetic Eudemus, that the inference depends on its being not merely infinite but infinite in all directions, is less worrying, since the argument for its infinity does indeed imply the latter.

The proof of the next attribute, ‘alike’, that is, homogeneous, survives only in a paraphrase: ‘Being one, it is alike everywhere [or ‘in every way’]. For if it were unlike, there would be a plurality, and no longer one but many’ (On Melissus, Xenophanes and Gorgias 974a12–14). Its homogeneity thus follows from its oneness. But whether the preceding arguments have shown it to be ‘one’ in the required sense (= ‘partless’ rather than ‘unique’?) is debatable.

After a brief summary of the results so far (fr. 7.1), there follows a generic argument against change: ‘And it could neither lose anything nor become larger nor be rearranged, nor does it suffer pain or grief. For if any of these happened to it, it would no longer be one. For if it changes, it is necessary that that-which-is is not alike, but that what previously was perishes while that-which-is-not comes to be. So if it were to become changed by a single hair in ten thousand years, it will all perish in the whole of time’.

Formally, this is meant to be an inference from the immediately preceding attribute ‘alike’, in conformity to Melissus’ standard inference pattern (see §2). But this time the likeness has to be invariance over time, not space, and that has not been specifically defended. (The defence might be that variation over time would imply a plurality of temporal parts, bordering on each other and therefore failing to be omnitemporal.) We should perhaps think of the likeness–changelessness inference as dictated by formal considerations, and give primary weight to the more interesting final sentence. This implies a version of the Principle of Plenitude: given infinite time all possibilities are realized. Any piecemeal perishing, however nugatory, makes overall perishing a possibility, and therefore a certainty over an infinite timespan – contrary to the earlier demonstration of everlastingness.

Following the generic rejection of change, Melissus adds four arguments against four species of change: reordering, pain, grief and motion (frs 7.3–10). The first three largely reapply the generic objections, but with the added consideration that pain and grief, being weaknesses, are incompatible with everlastingness. Melissus’ concern to deny human forms of suffering to his One has caused surprise. But it must be borne in mind that some Ionian thinkers had already endowed the unitary underlying substance with the characteristics of divinity (see Anaximander §2; Anaximenes §1). If, as suggested, Melissus is working within and correcting that tradition, a later report that he equated his One with God may be well founded.

The refutation of motion can be paraphrased as follows. Since void would be nothing, void clearly does not exist. Therefore that-which-is, lacking any admixture of void, cannot vary in density but is completely full. Therefore it cannot give way at any point. Therefore it cannot (internally) move (frs 7.7–10).

This rejection of void as ‘nothing’ is the nearest Melissus comes to accepting Parmenides’ outlawing of not-being. But he also makes an important advance on Parmenides in rendering explicit the dependence of motion on void.

Two further inferences are recorded. Being motionless, it is indivisible, since division involves motion (fr. 10). And ‘Being one, it must not have [a?] body. If it had bulk, it would have parts and no longer be one’ (fr. 9). The latter is especially puzzling, since the One’s incorporeality would seem to undermine the argument for its immobility on the grounds of ‘fullness’ (that is, solidity). It is likelier that Melissus would be denying that it has a body, one with organic parts, by way of objection to anthropomorphic conceptions of divinity. But it is doubtful whether the argument, at least as reported, can support this interpretation.

 

 

5 Attack on the senses

In fragment 8, apparently from a separate section of his book, Melissus follows the example set by Parmenides in turning his ontological conclusions against the senses. Since sense perception reports constant change, both between distinct stuffs and between pairs of opposite properties, it cannot be trusted. These many items, if real, would have to obey Melissus’ strictures and be altogether changeless, each of them staying exactly as it seemed when first encountered. In short: ‘If there were many things, they ought to be such as I say the One is’.

 

6 Influence

This last remark is often conjectured to have inspired early atomism, whose exponents Leucippus and Democritus (§2) did indeed populate the universe with an infinite plurality of atoms, each internally changeless like a Melissan One. Likewise Melissus’ insistence that void is a necessary condition of motion (see §4) may be seen as having helped prompt the atomists’ rehabilitation of void.

However, the chronological relation of Leucippus to Melissus remains undetermined. The void–motion connection could as well be one that Melissus learnt from Leucippus as vice versa; and the atomists’ introduction of an Eleatic plurality may have needed no impetus from Melissus, just their rehabilitation of Parmenidean not-being in the guise of void, which already implied the separation of Parmenidean being into a plurality of discrete parts. The seductive hypothesis of Melissan influence on the atomists must then remain unproven. Stronger evidence of his public recognition as a philosophical writer in his own day is the fact that his book On Nature or On That-Which-Is was evidently a primary target for Gorgias in his On That-Which-Is-Not or On Nature, a parody of Eleatic Philosophy, a parody of Eleatic philosophy.

In subsequent generations Melissus never inspired the kind of reverence, or even respect, that Parmenides was accorded. But his generally clear formulations of Eleatic positions are much more widely reflected in later writers, especially Aristotle, than the high-flown obscurities of Parmenides. He can thus be regarded, if not as the driving intellect of Eleatic thought, at least as its leading public voice.