On Presocratic philosophy as an essential constituent of Platonic philosophy

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The philosophy of Plato and that of the Presocratics are often said to be in opposition, but it is too much exaggeration to say that they have opinions opposed to each other in any domain. Rather, the Presocratics had much crucial influence on the making of the Platonic philosophy ; in effect, Plato inherited intellectual property from them and developed it in his own way. Even if Plato found essential differences in them from his own, these differences themselves prompted the formation of his new ideas.For example, it is said that the exact writings of the Presocratics primarily address issues in metaphysics and cosmology and that epistemological concerns appear to arise first in Plato. However, we may safely say that the questions about the nature, extent, sources and legitimacy of human knowledge are already paid attention to by the Presocratics, such as Xenophanes, Parmenides, Philolaus and Democritus. They tried to escape from and get over the tradition of the contrast between divine and human knowledge in order to attain to the truth and this positive attitude toward knowledge characterized the development of their epistemology and provided Plato with a framework for his proper theory of knowledge, e.g. the contrast between truth and opinion, the opposition of intellect to sens.The same can be said of Plato's ontology. He treats the issue of being in his dialogue Sophist ; there Plato tries to prove that that which is not somehow is and then that that which is somehow is not ; he calls this trial "patricide" but he never committed patricide doing so ; Plato evidently followed the same train of thought as Parmenides's. And there is also a striking similarity of structure between the metaphysics of Anaxagoras and that of Plato in his middle period. The Presocratic philosophy forms some backbone of that of Plato.