Ontology and Epistemology of Non-being in Plato's Philosophy: On Origins and Nature of Platonic Apophaticism

The dialogues "Parmenides" and "Sophist" are among the most important texts of Plato, where the themes of non-existence and apophaticism are considered. In the 20th century, they received interpretations radically different from the Neoplatonic one. They are now considered mainly as texts about the boundaries of language and knowledge, rather than about that ontological objectivity, which is quite openly declared in them. The authors of this article have tried to explore whether we can find additional arguments in favor of an «ontological» interpretation of Plato's apophaticism? To what extent is Plato's negative dialectic connected with Parmenides' poem «On Nature»? And wasn't Gorgias' Treatise on Non-Being one of the sources of reflection on the topic of negativity?