Jaap Mansfeld et al. Ja ap m a n sf

Ruminations on Mansfeld’s Melissus

 

 

125

 

especially Melissus) conceived of what-is. This is what I concentrate on in the re-

mainder of this note. 

Mansfeld’s references to Heraclitus, Anaxagoras, and Empedocles are intrigu-

ing in this context, for they suggest another way of thinking about how Melissus 

characterizes the One, and another reason for why Melissus says what he says and 

the way he says it about non-coming-to-be and non-passing-away. Heraclitus B30 

claims that ‘the ordered world, the same for all, no one of gods nor men made but 

always was, is, and will be, fire ever living, being kindled in measures and being 

extinguished in measures (κόσμον  τόνδε  τὸν  αὐτὸν  ἁπάντων  οὔτε  τις  θεῶν  οὔτε 

ἀνθρώπων ἐποίησεν ἀλλ’ ἦν ἀεὶ καὶ ἔστιν καὶ ἔσται πῦρ ἀεὶζωον ἁπτόμενον μέτρα 

καὶ ἀποσβεννύμενον μέτρα)’. The language here, along with that in other Heraclitus 

fragments, including 22 B50, B41, B32, and B64 invoke both the traditional and the 

new (philosophical) language of divinity: being that which neither comes-to-be nor 

passes away and endures is one of the marks of the divine.

9

 It is not, I think, shocking 

to suggest that Parmenides links what-is and divinity because of how what-is is (I 

argue for this in other places); this is a notion that actually supports linking Xenoph-

anes and Parmenides (rather than through appeals to monism of some kind). What 

strikes me now is that, just as Empedocles thought of the forces of Love and Strife 

and the roots as themselves divine in some way (hence the language of B16, B17, 

and B21), and just as Anaxagoras thinks of Nous as satisfying requirements for di-

vinity, Melissus too, may have attributed divinity to the One.

10

 This is a place where 

I part company with Mansfeld’s interpretation; yet the account I suggest is based on 

and stimulated by claims that he makes about Melissus and his views. Mansfeld’s 

stimulating account of Melissus moved me to think about how Melissus might fit 

into a discussion of divinity in ancient Greek philosophy. What I am about to suggest 

is clearly speculative, and here I can do no more than gesture at how an argument 

might go. If what I suggest is right, then we might be able to say more about Melis-

sus’ place in the development of philosophical thought. If Melissus indeed thought 

of his One Being as divine, that fact may help to shed some light on what strike me 

(and others) as the two most obvious oddities in Melissus’ claims.  

Oddity A: the One is unlimited in megethos (B3); nevertheless it has no body (B9).  

Oddity B: the One suffers neither pain nor affliction.  

To begin, I should note that the notion of divinity I have in mind here should not 

be equated with the traditional Greek view of the gods but should rather be under-

stand as a cluster of attributes that come from the conceptual analysis of the nature 

of divinity. I see (and have argued for) some of the first steps along this way being 

taken by Xenophanes and by Heraclitus. Xenophanes claimed that what the divine 

genuinely is has not been captured in traditional accounts of the gods (21 B11, B12, 

B14, B15, B16 DK) and his positive account provides some surprising attributes: the 

divine has no body, does not change in any way, and controls the cosmos by its 

                                                            

9

 Fuller arguments, Curd (2013, 2010, 2009). 

10

 Anaxagoras: 59 A48 DK. Empedocles 31 B17 DK especially suggests the divinity of the roots. 

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126 

Patricia Curd

 

 

thought (21 B23, B24, B26, B25 DK). Xenophanes hints at the conceptual analysis 

behind his claims when he rejects motion as ‘inappropriate’ for the divine (21 B26 

DK:  αἰεὶ  δ᾿  ἐν  ταὐτῷ  μίμνει  κινούμενος  οὐδέν / οὐδὲ  μετέρχεσθαί  μιν  ἐπιπρέπει 

ἄλλοτε ἄλλῃ). In a similar way, Heraclitus treats the entire cosmos as a divinity: it 

is always, and is self-controlling through the logos which contains the principles of 

intelligibility. In both Xenophanes and Heraclitus, the divine is co-extensive with 

the cosmos.

11

 So what has all this to do with the two great oddities?  

Melissus asserts that what-is must be unlimited, and I accept Mansfeld’s claim 

that this entails that it must be unlimited in size/extent (μέγεθος). If what-is is always 

(B3) and we take this to mean at every ‘when’ (in the minimal sense of B2 above), 

then it is reasonable to accept that it is every ‘where’ as well; for being here but not 

somewhere else could be thought to mark a limit where there can be none. Thus, 

what-is extends unlimitedly. In this aspect (but not, of course in others), Melissus’ 

One is like the original mixture of Anaxagoras, and as with that mixture, it makes 

little sense to speak of it as having a shape even though it extends everywhere.

12

 

That mixture is the unlimited expanse on which Nous operates. Melissus seems to 

conceive of the One in a similar fashion: it is the unlimited expanse of what-is. What-

is has just the characteristics (or is in just the ways) that Melissus deduces for it from 

an analysis of what it is to be the sort of thing that what-is is (and of course, there is 

no separate nous or anything else). This unlimited expanse of Being just is the One. 

This is what I take Mansfeld to mean when he claims that there is no ‘contradiction 

between having ‘size’, or extension, and not having a ‘body’’ (99), and parses that 

in terms of figure or shape in the mathematical sense.

13

 In this way, Melissus can 

seem to be situated, as it were, between Xenophanes/Heraclitus and Anaxagoras. 

The key is being without limits. Melissus B9 has elicited various responses, as Mans-

feld shows, mostly because of the supposed exoticism of the claim that what-is has 

no body and no thickness.

14

 While I am happy to follow Mansfeld in the explanation 

of why there is no contradiction here, I want to push things further.  

Both Renehan and Palmer explained the ‘no body’ claim on the grounds that 

Melissus rejects the idea that the One is like a living animal or human being. This 

allows them, as Mansfeld notes, to reject both Oddity A and Oddity B in one fell 

swoop. Mansfeld finds the single fell swoop disappointing and notes the distinctness 

of the treatments of A and B in Melissus’ text. Yet what Mansfeld’s view shares 

with this account is consent to the notion that the One is neither alive nor intelligent. 

                                                            

11

 This is not the usual view of Xenophanes’ god. (See, for instance Palmer (1998).) Again, my argu-

ments are elsewhere: in articles already referred to and in an ongoing work in progress on divinity, intel-

ligibility, and human thought. 

12

 The comparison with Anaxagoras is, I think, helpful, even though we acknowledge that Anaxagoras’ 

original mixture includes stuffs. I leave undiscussed the question of the relation between Melissus and 

Anaxagoras, as nothing I say here depends on it.  

13

 Mansfeld helpfully reminds us that this is not a new view, just an overlooked one (see his note 24 at 

p. 100). 

14

 The ‘exoticism’ is separate from the possible contradiction with megethos. I think that part of what 

people find so odd about B9 is the separation of being and being a body or bodily, or a stuff.  

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