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

This concludes my treatment of this particular view of the myth of Atlantis in the Timaeus. If we really are to treat this myth as a kind of case study of the victory of justice over injustice, it seems it is truly a very unlikely story. While one could still choose to view the myth in this rather nihilistic way, I would like to suggest an alternative view, one that is finds its basis in the character of Socrates.

Again, the dialogue of the Timaeus begins with Socrates and Timaeus recalling the conversation they had participated in the previous day, a conversation that sounds suspiciously similar to the conversation found in another of Plato’s works: the Republic. However, the conversation as found in the Republic is only partially repeated, and instead of continuing the entire conversation of Republic, Socrates insists that the city in words should be put to the test in battle, as war is said to be the truest test of a city’s mettle. When reading this passage while working on this paper, I was struck with how adamantly Socrates insists on seeing his creation in action, how excited he was to see his creation go through the adversity of war, and this puzzled and confused me. I began to think about why this notion, not being a particularly happy thought in itself, was so attractive to Socrates. I thought that, perhaps, if I could understand Socrates’ motivation for excitement for the myth, it would give me insight as to why Plato had included it. Thus, I began a character assessment of Socrates’ soul.

Knowing that Plato portrays Socrates as being a virtuous man, I quickly ruled out the option of his being some kind of sadist; it did not seem fitting with what I knew of Socrates to consider him a man who took pleasure in the pain of others. Similarly, I quickly eliminated the thought that this desire in Socrates was some kind of appetitive response to the glory of battle, or for mere entertainment, or of the self-righteous pride in knowing the greatness of his theoretical city. While we do see Socrates fall prey to his appetites, most pointedly in the first book of the Republic, this kind of fall is generally thought of as very uncharacteristic of Socrates, and the circumstances surrounding the conversation taking place in Timaeus seem much different than those found in book one of Republic. Another option as to the motivation for Socrates’ excitement that occurred to me was that of a father’s excitement in seeing his child flourish. Given what I knew of Socrates’ character, it being an example of virtue, this option seemed the most plausible. Yet, even if this were true, and Socrates was merely being proud of his children, it seems odd that he would remain excited over them when the story that Critias ends up telling really is not about them at all. Even if he could remain excited for his children in the midst of this abstraction, it seems even more odd that Socrates could be excited for his children even while the gods inadvertently end up destroying them, as was demonstrated above. Without other plausible alternatives, I was again pressed into agnosticism in regards to Plato’s motives regarding the inclusion of the myth of Atlantis.

It then occurred to me, however, that perhaps the reason that Plato includes the myth of Atlantis in Timaeus did not lay hidden in Socrates’ motivations for excitement, but in the excitement of Socrates itself. Stories are exciting. Stories move not only the head, but the heart as well. Stories take dry concepts and put flesh on them; they contextualize and personalize what would otherwise be considered by us to be esoteric and unimportant. Stories make us become a part of what they are attempting to tell us; they replace ideas with people, and appeal to the humanity within us to resonate with its characters, hoping that if we can understand why an idea matters so much to a person who is in the situation, we can understand why the idea really matters. Therefore, I believe that Plato did not include the myth of Atlantis and the Ideal Athens in the Timaeus in order to communicate to us some deep metaphysical truth about the benefits of justice or injustice’s lack thereof. I believe that Plato uses the myth of the Ideal Athens in an attempt to get us to really resonate with the people of the ideal city. Once this happens, Plato can thereby make us understand that justice is not merely an ideal in the world of the Forms. I think that Plato, in using this story, would have us believe that actually having justice and living justice, for those Athenians who stood between the Empire of Atlantis and the rest of the free world, was truly a matter of life and death. I believe that once we can understand the gravity of that, we can really and truly understand Plato’s conception of justice.