Jaap Mansfeld et al. Ja ap m a n sf

Ruminations on Mansfeld’s Melissus

 

 

127

 

Mansfeld interprets Melissus’ rejection of pain and affliction as polemical, and 

aimed at earlier Presocratic commitments to divine principles: ‘this refusal to accord 

sentience to Being is analogous to the decision to deprive the presentation of Being 

of a dramatic and divine apparatus like that imagined by Parmenides. Everything 

should be as low-key as possible’.

15

 I am not so sure. There is no direct discussion 

of divinity in the fragments that we have; yet there could be a low-key and non-

dramatic commitment to the fundamental divinity of the One. The commitment 

could perhaps explain the odd comment at Plac. 1.7.27 that Melissus (and Zeno!) 

hold that ‘god is the one-and-all and the only one to be eternal and infinite’. There 

is no direct evidence for this, but that Melissus did not think of the One as consistent 

with divinity may require more explanation than that he did think so. For, after all, 

if one were arguing against attributing divinity to the One, the mere denial of pain 

and affliction to the One is an odd way to do so: those seem to be such fundamentally 

non-divine characteristics. One might suggest that the argument against pain and 

affliction stems not from a rejection of the One’s divine status, but from a positive 

commitment to its divinity, as divinity is properly to be understood.

16

 Yes, Melissus 

might say, the One is divine, and is aware, but recall Xenophanes’ claim in B25 that 

the divine directs (shakes) all things ‘utterly without toil (ἀπάνευθε πόνοιο)’. Xe-

nophanes, too, denies body to the divine (or so I have argued). Whether a Xenopha-

nean-like non-bodily omni-awareness is consistent with the other attributes of the 

One remains to be investigated. (For instance, what interpretation would Melissus 

give of Parmenides 28 B3 or B8. 34-36 DK?) 

This places Melissus more in the mainstream of Presocratic philosophers. I take 

Mansfeld’s view that Melissus’ targets and audience are other thinkers like himself 

(i.e. philosophers), rather than ordinary people, to be exactly right. Yet, there is in-

deed a difference between Melissus and the others: he accepts the divinity of what-

is but denies that this divinity controls the cosmos either directly or indirectly. There 

can be no cosmos that is real, for a cosmos is an arrangement that changes. Moreo-

ver, insofar as there can be no connection between the One and a phenomenal world, 

there can be no justification for human beliefs through their grounding in the divine 

(something that Heraclitus and others seem to be working toward). Melissus’ philo-

sophical tough-mindedness is revealed in B8: anything that is other than the One, 

must be just like the One; but that means nothing other than the One is. 

 

 

Purdue University 

 

 

                                                            

15

 Mansfeld, 81. 

16

 Why does Melissus not make more fuss about divinity? It might be that, by his time, there is a core 

philosophical view of divinity (as developed in Xenophanes and Heraclitus) that he could take for granted 

(as perhaps Anaxagoras does if he takes Nous to be divine, and which may be also be at work in Emped-

ocles). Melissus’ distaste for Parmenidean drama might be playing a role at this stage.

 

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128 

Patricia Curd

 

 

 

References 

Barnes, J. (1979), The Presocratic Philosophers (London) 

Coope, U. (2005), Time for Aristotle (Oxford) 

Curd, P. (2013), ‘The Divine and the Thinkable: Toward and Account of the Intelligible Cos-

mos’, Rhizomata 1, 217-247 (Betegh, G. and Bodnar, I. eds., Proceedings of the Fourth 

Symposium Praesocraticum) 

Curd, P. (2011), ‘Divinity and Intelligibility in Parmenides’, L. Ruggiu and C. Natali, eds., 

Ontologia Scienza Mito: Per una nuova lettura di Parmenide (Milano), 117-133 

Curd, P. (2009), ‘Thought and Body in Heraclitus and Anaxagoras’, Guertler, G. and Wians, 

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20, 39-41 

Curd, P. (2013), ‘Where are Love and Strife? Incorporeality in Empedocles’, in McCoy, J. 

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