The earliest mention of Melissus of Samos by name is found in the first chapter of the Hippocratic De natura hominis. In the following note, I attempt to examine what is meant by the reference Melissus’ ‘logos’ in this work and suggest, against previous accounts, including Galen’s, that it has little to do with his commitment to monism. Rather Melissus’ logos is better understood as his referring to his strategy for demonstrating such a conclusion, especially his use of a supplemental (...) argument in his fragment B8. Polybus’ concern in this first chapter is not monism as such but the claims to knowledge monists make. Melissus is a prime example of a monist who fails to grasp what he claims to know. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to reconstruct the logical structure of Melissus philosophy, building on Laks Most’s translation and Barnes’ seminal work on the Samian. This will allow us to shed some light on the subtle argumentations of Melissus. On top of that, we frame Melissus’ metaphysics employing modern logical instruments. On one side, this reformulation makes clear a few assumptions hidden in the deductions made by the Samian; on the other side, our paper shows that contemporary analytic metaphysics (...) has forerunners dating back 2500 years. (shrink)

Parmenides and Melissus employ different deductive styles for their different kinds of argumentation. The former’s poem flows in an interesting sequence of passages: contents foreword, methodological premises, krisis, conclusions and corollaries. The latter, however, organizes an extensive process of deduction to show the characteristics of what is. In both cases, the strength of their argument rests on their deductive form, on the syntactical level of their texts: the formal structure of their reasonings help to identify the features and logical intersections (...) of their thoughts. On the one hand, Parmenides uses modal reasoning, enforcing the employment of the principle of the excluded middle. On the other hand, Melissus radicalizes the use of modal reasoning and employs counterfactual statements in order to develop his doctrine of what is. Despite their differences, both deserve a place in the Stone Age of logic and theory of argumentation due to their common ambition to demonstrate what is. (shrink)

This page is dedicated to an analysis of the first section of Parmenides' Poem, the Way of Truth, with a selection of critical judgments by the most important commentators and critics. In the Annotated Bibliography I list the main critical editions (from the first printed edition of 1573 to present days) and the translations in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish, with a selection of studies on Parmenides; in future, a section will be dedicated to an examination of some critical (...) variants of the Greek text, with particular attention to corrections to the Diels-Kranz (abbreviated DK) edition of the Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. The fragments of Parmenides' Poem are cited according to Diels-Kranz numbering system as adopted in the 6th edition, Berlin 1952; the Poem is divided into three parts: the Proem fr. I, 1-32; the Way of Truth (Alethéia) from fr. II to VIII, 49, and the Way of Mortal Opinion (Doxa) fr. VIII, 50 to XIX, 3. (shrink)

The traditional interpretation of Eleatism has it that Melissus was a disciple of Parmenides and that Parmenides believed in the timeless eternity of Being. It seems, on the contrary, that Melissus acknowledged the reality of time by conceiving eternity as infinite time. Failing to justify this particular divergence from Parmenides’ approach, certain authors held that it was necessary to reinterpret the Melissan eternity as a form of infinite timelessness. This paper attempts to demonstrate that this reading is groundless and that (...) if the traditional interpretation is questioned then one should reconsider the assumptions and but not. (shrink)