Samian Meontology. On Melissus, Non-Being, and Self-Refutation

Résumé

It is traditionally – and with reason – attributed to Melissus an absolute kind of monism, which we do not even recognize in his alleged master, Parmenides. For Melissus, there is only a unique, infinite, eternal, homogeneous and unchangeable entity. On this point, there is an almost unanimous consensus among scholars. This implies that nothing else exists except this one entity, and therefore that our physical world, the objects of our experiences, do not exist. Everything we know and talk about is not real. There are some passages in Melissus’ fragments that make this anti-Parmenidean consequence explicit.

This means that monistic ontology generates, like a shadow, a vast ‘meontology’ that surrounds every human naturalistic discourse, every theory about the world and therefore every possible object of knowledge (except for one). This, however, hides a problem of no small importance: among the non-existent things assumed by this doctrine there are, indeed, even the humans, and so the philosopher himself, Melissus, and his book, and any human thought or speech. This would seem to make Melissus’ doctrine self-refuting, denied by the very existence of the doctrine itself and of the one who proposes it, as well as by the experience of those who learn it. The difficulties inherent in strict monism have led not only to reassume the traditional critical judgments on Melissus’ philosophy (dating back at least to Aristotle) but also, in recent times, to believe that he was not a serious philosopher, rather an eristic thinker.

In this essay, I propose to examine the dark side of Melissean ontology, his discourse on non-being, and to demonstrate not only how his doctrine – in Melissus’ perspective – could escape the risk of self-refutation, but also that there is no compelling evidence that proves he should not be taken seriously.