Melissus

Early Greek Philosophy
Jonathon Barnes
2001

Like Parmendies and Zeno, Melissus was in the Eleatic school.

Melissus was from Samos and at one point defeated Pericles and the Athenians in a sea battle. But, he is better known as a follower of Parmenides. Melissus' known book is actually a prose version of Parmenides' strange poetic work 'The Way of Truth'

Like Parmenides, he insists that whatever exist has always existed because it cannot have come from nothing (nothing can't exist) and it couldn't have come from something else (otherwise it would have always been that something in the first place).

He also agrees with Parmenides that nothing can be destroyed.

He also agrees that it it is limitless. Since it is limitless there can be nothing else. This is the justification for monism.

Since it is uncreated, indestructible and limitless making everything one, there is no change. You can't change anything into something else if there is only one limitless thing.

He also denies the possibility of motion. He does this by reasoning since everything is one, it cannot condense or become rarefied as earlier philosophers said because if it did condense or become rarefied it would be at the same time denser than itself, which is impossible. So since it cannot change it is full. If it is full then there is no chance for anything to move within itself.

"For what does not exist wholly cannot exist always" (Barnes, 94). Nothing can come into being. It exists or it does not.

He has an interesting thought on how the limitless thing cannot suffer pain: "Nor does it suffer pain. For if it is in pain it will not wholly exist; for a thing in pain cannot exist always, nor does it have equal power with what is healthy. Nor will it be similar if it suffers pain; for it will suffer pain by the loss or the addition of something, and it will no longer be similar. Nor could what is healthy suffer pain; for the health which existed would perish and what did not exist would come into being. With regard to suffering anguish, the same argument holds as for being in pain" (Barnes, 96). That's an interesting thought if Melissus equates the limitless with god in a pantheistic way.

The physical world for Melissus was 'the way of opinion', not in 'the way of truth'. The physical world isn't the true reality.

For both Parmenides and Melissus the physical objects of the world only seem to exist but have no true existence.