With respect to Parmenides’ thought Melissus was regarded as a dissident thinker already in antiquity. His polemical introduction of the concept of void and the relative idea of infinite Being seemed particularly controversial. The aim of the present paper is to examine the origins of the Melissian understanding of void in order to trace its philosophical genesis to the criticism of the Atomist Leucippus. According to the philosopher from Abdera, the Eleatic fundamental principles had to conform to the obviousness of (...) bodies’ motion, which is why the Eleatic not-Being had to be understood as void. Melissus took issue with this view and criticized the idea of the void’s reality by means of a methodical argument. In the course of doing so, the philosopher from Samos distorted the original Parmenidean ontology, which is why his theories were often criticized severely as theoretically weak. (shrink)

Numenius is an author who straddles the line between Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism. In this contribution, I focus on the differences between the second and the third God, which emerge from analyses of the relevant fragments. Numenius emphasizes, on several occasions, how the second God (i.e., the demiurge) has a dual nature. In this paper, I investigate the role of the demiurge in Numenius and examine in what sense the second and third God are “one.” On the one hand, Numenius (...) seems to be stressing the unity of the second and third levels of reality, but on the other hand, he also appears to be differentiating them. The present analyses concentrate on fragments 19F, 24F, 29T and 30T (respectively 11, 16, 21, and 22 in des Places’ edition). My purpose is to demonstrate that, according to Numenius, the second and the third God are one because they both can be regarded as demiurgic. Thus, Numenius conceives a kind of “double demiurgy,” which preserves the distinction between the second and the third God, who are distinguished from an ontological point of view, but who, at the same time, share a demiurgic function. The second God is then the paradigm, whereas the third God is immanent in matter as a ruling principle of the cosmos, which is similar to the World Soul, as he operates on matter in order to make it rationally ordered. (shrink)

Numenius is one of the most important authors who, in the Imperial Age, deal with the figure of Socrates. Socrates is important in the Platon­ic tradition, in particular in the sceptical tradition, when the Socratic dubitative “spirit” of the first Platonic dialogues became important to justify the “suspension of judgement.” Numenius criticises the whole Academic tradition by saying that the Academics (particularly the sceptics) betrayed the original doctrine of Plato and formulated a new image of Socrates. For Numenius, Socrates plays (...) a central role because Plato would have inherited his doctrine. What does Socrates’s doctrine consist in? According to Numenius, Socrates theorised a “doctrine of three Gods” (which can be likely found in the second Platonic epistle) which is strictly bound up with the main aspect of Plato’s thought. In fact, in Numenius’s view, Plato belongs to a genealogy which can be linked to Pythagoras himself. From this perspective, Numenius says that Socrates’s original thought is a theology which also belongs to the Pythagorean tradition and which Plato further developed. For Nume­nius, Socrates is not the philosopher of doubt, but a theologian who first theorised the existence of three levels of reality (Gods), which is also the kernel of Numenius’s metaphysical system. For this reason, Numenius puts Socrates within a theological genealogy that begins with Pythago­ras and continues with Socrates and Plato, and that the Academics and the Socratics failed to understand. (shrink)

Numenio appartiene all’ambito degli interpreti medioplatonici dei dialoghi di Platone; nel Medioplatonismo, infatti, si diffuse la tendenza a interpretare la filosofia di Platone come in chiave sistematica. Il dialogo più rilevante per questa operazione esegetica nel Medioplatonismo fu certamente il Timeo. In questo contributo intendo concentrarmi sull’interpretazione delle pagine 28a-29a del Timeo da parte di Numenio di Apamea ed esaminarne l’esegesi alla luce della sua prospettiva onto-teologica. Nel Timeo, l’utilizzo del verbo βλέπω ha la funzione di descrivere il fatto che (...) il demiurgo è contemplativo nei confronti del paradigma intelligibile. In Numenio, invece, l’associazione del verbo βλέπω al demiurgo è volta a mostrare il ruolo di mediatore che il secondo dio svolge tra il primo principio e la materia. In questo modo si mostrerà come i passi del Timeo vengano interpretati da Numenio alla luce della sua metafisica dualista. (shrink)

The first book of the Aristotelian Physics may be considered as a sort of general introduction to the whole work. In particular, chapters 2 and 3 result very interesting for the foundation of the science of nature according to Aristotle; indeed, in these two chapters, the Stagirite criticizes the position of the Eleates Parmenides and Melissus. These two philosophers are considered as those who claim that change does not exist because the existence of the not-being is impossible to suppose. For (...) this reason, since the Eleates deny that motion and change really exist, the refutation of their thesis results essential for the logical and ontological foundation of the Aristotelian science of nature. This paper wants to make light on the argumentations that Aristotle uses against Parmenides and Melissus. Indeed, since the Stagirite makes often use of his philosophical categories, it seems that his critics sound a little bit anachronistic. In many passages of the text is seems that Aristotle “simply” replace the presupposition of the Eleatic philosophy with the thesis of the evidence of moving and plurality, in general. The aim of this contribution is to reflect on the critics present in Ph. I 2–3 in order to underline the importance of the Eleatic philosophy for the Aristotelian science of nature. (shrink)