Jaap Mansfeld et al. Ja ap m a n sf

 

 

 

 

Il dibattito 

 

 

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Ruminations on Mansfeld’s Melissus

1

 

Patricia Curd 

Jaap Mansfeld’s lectures on Melissus are a pleasure to read and to think about; 

as he points out, Melissus is too often over-looked and under-rated. The lectures 

contain useful discussions about why this has happened, and especially helpful is the 

treatment of Melissus in the ancient world. Here I respond to Mansfeld in the best 

way I can: by exploring some of the questions and ideas that were raised for me 

while working through ‘Melissus Between Miletus and Elea’. These are problems 

about time, about the nature of the One and the body problem of B9, and Melissus’ 

place in the development of Post-Parmenidean Presocratic philosophical inquiry. I 

accept that it is crucial that we not elide Melissus and Parmenides, or to treat Zeno 

as having views that are, as a matter of course, the same as or parallel to those of 

either.

2

 Melissus is a serious thinker, whose views are meant to be taken seriously, 

and not an unimaginative (and bad) popularizer of the more thoughtful Parmenides. 

It may be that ‘it is not such a good sign that every so often [Melissus] is believed to 

be in need of rehabilitation’ (Mansfeld, 72), but that is, I think, less a signal of a 

problem with Melissus himself than it is a not-so-good sign of the stubbornness of 

modern scholars in clinging to older views.

3

  

A look at the relevant texts makes it clear that Parmenides and Melissus make 

different claims about what-is. As Mansfeld says, ‘The attributes of Being deduced 

one after the other by Melissus are partly of direct Parmenidean descent, but there 

are also some to some extent new or at least revised ones… The arguments in favour 

often present an emphasis that differs from that of the Master’ (77). The question is 

what to make of the differences. An obvious case, mentioned by almost everyone, is 

                                                            

1

 My thanks to the editor for asking me to be a part of this project; I especially thank him for his 

patience. I have learned much from Jaap Mansfeld’s discussion of Melissus, just as I am always enriched 

by thinking about Mansfeld’s work. 

2

 This is important, I think, whether or not we suppose that ancient thinkers, Plato (for instance) con-

flates the views of Parmenides, Melissus, and Zeno (as I think he does, for his own purposes in both Parts 

I and II of the Parmenides). Where we have independent texts, we need not accept that Parmenides (or 

Zeno) held a view just because Plato asserts that this is so. In what follows, for reasons of brevity, I ignore 

the [Aristotle] MXG. 

3

 Consider how long it has taken for non-specialist scholars’ complacency about the incompatibility 

between Empedocles’ so-called religious and philosophical views to be shaken up, or for philosophers to 

give up the assumption that real philosophy starts with Socrates. The periodic ‘rehabilitations’ may also 

be related to a desire to produce revolutionary new and radically improved interpretations, when it may 

well be that most interpretations produce incremental progress.  

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124 

Patricia Curd

 

 

that of time.

4

 In the opening lines of 28 B8 Parmenides states the ‘signs’ along the 

way that it is (characteristics that point out how what-is is): 

… a single account still remains of the route that it is: and on this there are very many 

signs, how what-is is ungenerable and imperishable, a whole of a single kind, unshaking 

and complete; nor was it nor will it be, inasmuch as it is now, all together one, cohesive. 

(οὐδέ ποτ’ ἦν οὐδ’ ἔσται, ἐπεὶ νῦν ἐστιν ὁμοῦ πᾶν ἕν, συνεχές) 

Parmenides’ language puzzles. Is Parmenides claiming that what-is is outside of 

time, hence, past and future make no sense for it, because for what-is it is always 

only ‘now’?

5

 Melissus, too, denies coming-to-be and passing away to what-is (30 

B1 DK); he reasserts this in expanding on the denial in B2, but his vocabulary differs 

from that of Parmenides: ‘Since it did not come into being, it is always, it was al-

ways, and will always be (ὅτι τοίνυν οὐκ ἐγένετο, ἔστι τε καὶ ἀεὶ ἦν καὶ ἀεὶ ἔσται)’ 

(30 B2 DK; see B1, B3, B4). Melissus’ eschewal of now (νῦν) and his repeated use 

of always (ἀεί) in his account of the One has seemed not only a difference from 

Parmenides but an improvement in Melissus’ view. Some have wanted to say that 

there is a different conception of time and temporality at work in the two theories. 

(Palmer, e.g., says that ‘Parmenides denied the applicability of temporal predicates 

to what is’ while Melissus attributes to it sempiternality, or everlastingness.

6

) Mans-

feld is cautious, saying only that Melissus’ claims are perhaps clearer than those of 

Parmenides: ‘Melissus is in favour, here as elsewhere, of disambiguation’ and so 

avoids using now, substituting a notion of everlastingness as in Heraclitus B30; 

Mansfeld adds references to Anaxagoras (59 B12) and to Empedocles (31 B16 and 

B21.13; 77-78 and n. 25). I do not wish to enter the discussion about the theoretical 

underpinnings of Parmenides’ and Melissus’ conceptions of time and what-is, for I 

do not think that this is a particularly fruitful way to think about the Presocratics. 

After all, a theory of time is hardly to be found in Plato, and the discussion really 

begins with Aristotle: in both the Timaeus and the Physics, time is clearly connected 

with change.

7

 As neither Parmenides nor Melissus attribute change to what genu-

inely is (and Melissus denies that there is anything at all other than the One), the 

Platonic and Aristotelian accounts have no specific relevance to their views.

8

 I am 

not claiming that neither Parmenides nor Melissus had a view about time (and cer-

tainly would not assert that they were incapable of having a theoretical conception 

of time), but I do suggest that extracting, concentrating on, and overcomplicating the 

temporal claims might make us miss something else but related about how they (and 

                                                            

4

 That difference is noticed need not mean it is necessarily properly appreciated. Palmer (2003, 2004) 

has collected a number of such cases. 

5

 See Barnes (1979 chapter X) for an attempt to analyze an argument here. Schofield (1970) gives a 

good account of the views at the time. A clear and helpful account is in McKirahan (2008), 205-208. 

6

 Palmer (2004), 26; (2009), 205-06. 

7

 See Osborne (1996), esp. 194-196; Johansen (2004), Coope (2005).  

8

 Does any Presocratic have a theoretical view of time? Anaxagoras (in discussions of both Nous and 

original mixture) and Empedocles (with the cycles and the development of living things) both seem to 

assume certain basic temporal notions, but neither really examines them.  

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