Abstract

Until recently, Melissus of Samos has been undeservedly neglected by scholars, largely because of Aristotle's harsh criticism and because, as a result, Melissus has been perceived as a second-rate philosopher clinging to the coattail of Parmenides. In the last half-century, however, several scholars have been re-examining Melissus' arguments and his role in the development of ancient philosophy. They have discovered that Melissus' influence upon later thinkers such as Plato has been far greater than Aristotle's assessment would lead us to believe and that Melissus is a significant philosopher in his own right. Scholars have relied upon the extant fragments, all preserved by Simplicius, in their re-examination, but relatively little attention has been paid to the context of the fragments and of the testimonies. This dissertation is intended to help remedy this neglect by compiling all of the relevant sources and providing some preliminary commentary. I have included all of the sources in the original and in translation, including any passages in Simplicius that may aid in assessing him as an interpreter of and a source for Melissus. Of the comments, the most important are on Plato and Aristotle, the MXG, and Simplicius. Regarding Plato and Aristotle, I argue that the Eleaticism they inherit from Parmenides has been largely filtered through Melissus, whose version of Eleaticism won out over the competing versions of the pluralists Anaxagoras and Empedocles. The MXG, I argue, is a relatively reliable source for the general structure of Melissus' arguments and may also provide clues about the content of parts of Melissus' deduction that have not been preserved in the fragments. Simplicius, I contend, is a reliable reporter of Melissus' doctrine, and he is careful to distinguish Melissus' actual arguments from his own highly tendentious interpretation. His paraphrase, however, is of little value for a reconstruction of Melissus' deduction, with the important exception of the opening sentence, which is either a close paraphrase or an actual quotation of Melissus' opening argument. I conclude the dissertation with a tentative commentary on Melissus' arguments themselves