The Unlikely Story - An Investigation of the Myth of Atlantis and the Ideal Athens in the Timaeus: Part I.

As we are inextricably caught in the world of becoming for Plato, change and motion are the most fundamental principles of physics. All is always in motion; everything is constantly changing. One can never have true knowledge of anything in this world of becoming, because again, everything is constantly changing, and thus the set of data from which we deduce truth is always different than it was, five minutes previously. As our data set is always changing, it is really only possible to have likely stories as to the nature of how things really are. We must create myths to fill in the epistemic gaps in our data, myths that change as our data changes. Therefore, mythic truth holds a very high place in Platonic thought, and as such, the investigation of myth within the Platonic dialogues becomes paramount if we are to understand what Plato is saying. Timaeus, being almost entirely comprised of myth, becomes a kind of bastion of Platonic opinion, where students investigate the likely story contained within the dialogue, as well as the likely story qua likely story.

Considering this, what are we to make of the recapitulation of books I – V of the Republic at the outset of the Timaeus, as well as the myth of the Ideal Athens and Atlantis that follows it? It seems unlikely that, in view of the importance placed on myth by Plato, that this story is merely a placeholder, or a herald for the story of the Critias, or something similar. I would suggest that the brief version of the story of Atlantis was placed in the Timaeus for a specific purpose, although what exactly that purpose is I do not know, and in a way this agnosticism seems fitting, considering that, for Plato, we live in the world of becoming. In this paper, my goal is to exegete the beginning of the Timaeus in hopes to come closer to the truth of why Plato included such a myth, and to examine the myth’s relationship to the Platonic idea of the justice in a city/soul—both in the abstract and in the character of Socrates. Hopefully, this endeavor will help us to create a more likely story for the purpose of the myth of Atlantis and the Ideal Athens as is found in the Timaeus.