Jaap Mansfeld et al. Ja ap m a n sf
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Melissus between Miletus and Elea I
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This opposition between what is true, or real, on the one hand and what seems to us on the other is elucidated by appealing to the claim that a thing, to be real, should be just like the author says Being is. In Parmenides the fundamental op- position between alētheia on the one hand and human doxai (in which there is no true trust) on the other is stipulated by the Goddess in the proem at the outset of the whole poem (and so at the outset of Part I as well), and for the second time at the outset of Part II, at the beginning of the cosmology, so both times in much more strategic places. 9 And the (rhetorical) concepts of persuasion (πειθώ) and trust (πίστις), which in Parmenides are linked with truth, 10 are absent in Melis- sus. Accordingly, Melissus strips Parmenides’ account of its wonderful mysta- gogical, rhetorical, and psychological paraphernalia. His discourse is entirely secular. A similar reduction may be recognized in his treatment of the laborious Parmenidean disjunction of Being and non-Being by means of their fundamental relation to thinking and thought (νοῆσαι, νοεῖν, νοῆμα, νοητός, νόος) and to speaking and speech (λέγειν, λόγος, φᾶσθαι, φατός, πεφατισμένον, φατίζω). Apart from the words λόγος and φᾶσθαι this rich vocabulary is not paralleled in Melissus’ verbatim fragments. 11
Λόγος, ‘what is said’, meaning ‘argument’ rather than ‘account’, occurs twice in Melissus, viz. at 30 B7(6) and B8(1). At B7(6), where he characterizes Being, we read ‘pertaining to (its) being afflicted the argument is the same as for being in pain’ (περὶ τοῦ ἀνιᾶσθαι ὡυτὸς λόγος τῷ ἀλγέοντι). The only early par- allel for the formula ὡυτὸς λόγος is a single instance in Zeno fr. 29 B1: ‘the same argument pertains to what protrudes from it’ (περὶ τοῦ προύχοντος ὁ αὐτὸς λόγος). Next, at B8(1) Melissus, looking back to and recapitulating what came before, states: ‘the above argument is the most important sign that it is one alone, but the following are signs too’ (μέγιστον μὲν οὖν σημεῖον οὗτος ὁ λόγος, ὅτι ἓν μόνον ἔστιν, ἀτὰρ καὶ τάδε σημεῖα). Parmenides uses σήματα to denote the ‘at- tributes’ of Being and of the elements of the Doxa, 12 onym σημεῖα differently, viz. in the sense of ‘arguments’ (the term only occurs in fr. 30 B8). In Parmenides the term λόγος occurs three times, once in the sense of ‘argu- ment’ (the gentle λόγοισιν that persuade Dikē to open the gate, 28 B1.15), once perhaps meaning ‘account’ rather than ‘argument’ (28 B8.50, ‘at this point I end
9 Fr. 28 B1.28–30, B8.50–51. 10 Fr. 28 B1.30, B2.4, B8.12.50; cf. with the verb B8.39 πεποιθότες εἶναι ἀληθῆ. See Mourelatos ( 2
11 The cognitive verb γινώσκειν (not in Parmenides) occurs in the awkward phrase ὥστε συμβαίνει μήτε ὁρᾶν μήτε τὰ ὄντα γινώσκειν (30 B8(4)), probably correctly athetized by Barnes (1987), 149 as a gloss.
12 Fr. 28 B8.22 of Being, B8.55 of the elements. 76
Jaap Mansfeld
for you the persuasive account and thought’), once certainly in the sense of ‘ar- gument’ ‘or ‘reasoning’ (28 B7.5, ‘judge by reasoning my much-contested proof’) too, and here in a rather more pivotal location than in Melissus. For all that we may have an important occurrence of the verb λέγειν in a sort of ‘Parmenidean’ sense in the first sentence of the Simplician paraphrase of fr. 30 B1 (in Phys. 103.13–16). 13 Simplicius explicitly says that the treatise began with the phrase ‘if there were nothing, what could be said (λέγοιτο) of it as if it were something that is?’ Burnet and Reale have argued that this rhetorical ques- tion is a genuine fragment, 14 and though I hesitate to accept that the quotation is ad litteram, it seems safe to assume that it reproduces something Melissus really wrote. It constitutes the most important epistemological reflection to be found in his remains. Yet the distinction between non-Being and Being is here given rather than argued for, and succinctly presented as a fait accompli. The clarifi- cation one needs is supplied in what immediately follows in Simplicius’ para- phrase, and is also extant in the close parallel in Philoponus’ account of Melis- sus’ argument. 15 Both Simplicius and Philoponus, with Aristotle’s famous char- acterization of the material cause attributed to the physicists in mind (‘they think nothing is either generated or destroyed, since this sort of entity is always pre- served’ 16
of the (ontological) principle of the physicists, which shows that what we have at this point is interpretation and elaboration rather than paraphrase. In the verbatim fragments too we no longer find a necessary connection of Being with thinking as in Parmenides, but only one with ‘saying’ (φᾶσθαι), less private and more public than thinking. This seems to be encapsulated in the for- mula ‘just like I [sc. Melissus] say (ἐγὼ φημι) that the One is’ (30 B8(2)), already quoted above. 17 But what ‘we say’, expressed by the same verb, or ‘believe’ (φαμεν, B8(2)), about reality as humans, or what men in general ‘say’, or ‘be- lieve’ (φασὶν οἱ ἄνθρωποι, B8(2), φαμένοις B8(4)), turns out to apply to, or im- ply, non-Being and so is mistaken. For if true it would entail that ‘what-is did perish and what-is-not has come into being’ (τὸ μὲν ἐὸν ἀπώλετο, τὸ δὲ οὐκ ἐὸν γέγονεν, B8(6)). This core ingredient of Parmenides’ distinction between Being and non-Being still determines the argument in the later paragraphs of Melissus’ exposition.
13 The single instance of the verb in Zeno fr. 29 B1 is less pregnant: ὅμοιον δὴ τοῦτο ἅπαξ τε εἰπεῖν καὶ ἀεὶ λέγειν (‘it is the same to say this once and to say it always’). 14 Numbered *0 in Reale’s edition, but see Long (1976), 647–648. 15 Simp. in Phys. 103.16–23 (in the apparatus in DK); Philop. in Phys. 51.20–52.6 (not in DK, but printed at Reale (1970), ‘vita e dottrina’ *10a ad finem, and Vitali (1973), LXXXV
.) 16 See Arist. Met. Α 3.983b6–18, cf. Μ 6.1062b24–26. 17 Il. B 129 is the only earlier parallel. Yüklə 390,13 Kb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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