Plato's Critias Revisited: The Tale of Atlantis and the Harmonics of Memory

Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

Plato brought the legend of Atlantis to the world in the Timaeus, and in the Critias provided many details of the fabulously wealthy and technologically advanced society that fell into disharmony and disappeared in a great earthquake 9,000 years earlier. As the character Critias relates the story, over time the Atlanteans gradually forgot their divine origin from the god Poseidon and began to pursue material wealth, losing their harmony and bringing upon themselves the punishment of Zeus. On December 3, 2023, members of the Toronto, Calgary, and Chicago Philosophy Meetup groups addressed the curious ending of the tale told by the character Critias, just as he was about to quote the words of Zeus. Was this cliff-hanger, “and he said …” a theatrical device of Plato, or a case of lost writing, or was Plato telling us that no human can know the mind of a god? The theme of memory plays throughout the dialogue, and Critias says that memory is particularly difficult when opinion applies in representing human actions over time. Was the ancient story that Critias relates a warning to the Athenians of his time about social constitutions like those of Atlantis that become too rigidly rooted in the past, and are there warnings in it for our time? The mystery of Atlantis has endured for 2,400 years since Plato’s writing, and in our discussion we may have found some clues to understanding the lessons of Atlantean history.