Atlantis-Scout Contents Overview Inhaltsübersicht Avoiding Atlantis means Avoiding Plato Julia Annas and Plato's Atlantis Thorwald C. Franke © 19 April 2020 Julia Annas is an internationally renowned Plato researcher who also published about Platonic Myths. In her 2011 article about Plato's Atlantis story she rightly points out that Atlantis is not what Plato aimed for. Plato's dialogues Timaeus and Critias are rather about virtue as a value in itself, not as a means to achieve anything else, neither wealth nor glory, and about the orientation of the virtuous mind considering the eternal order of the cosmos. And about the ideal state ruled by virtuous men and women, of course. Nevertheless, Julia Annas is wrong in her opinions about Atlantis. This shall be demonstrated in the following. The deeper reaons will be discussed in the conclusion. A fictional story? Julia Annas is right in expressing the thought that the core message of the Atlantis story would even be delivered if it was presented only as an invented story with a message based only on literary allegory and not on reality [p. 61]. Yet here, Julia Annas stumbles over Plato's text. Indeed, the first suggestion of Socrates at the beginning of the Timaeus is to develop such an invented story about the ideal state, based only on the experiences of the dialogue participants, not based on a real event, and clearly pointed out to be an invention. Just as Julia Annas says. But then, there is a turn in the plot. Then, Critias comes along with a supposedly suitable real story to fulfill the task. And Socrates asserts that a real example is better than an invented example. Now, we all have to agree with Socrates that a real example is better than an invented one. Of course, the Athens-Atlantis story may still be an invention. But shall we really expect the readers of the dialogue to recognize a fiction after the dismissal of an invented story and this turn towards a real story which is indeed better than an invented story? Julia Annas (and with her many other adherents of he Atlantis invention hypothesis) is conspicuously silent about this turn at the beginning of the dialogue. Julia Annas is also conspicuously silent about the fact that Plato's Atlantis blends perfectly into the views of geography and history of his time. This is true e.g. for the alleged age of Atlantis of 9,000 years. The 9,000 years cannot serve well as a sign of fiction since the 9,000 years fit perfectly into the (erroneous) chronological views of Plato and his time, with Egypt thought to be older than 11,000 years. – It is also true for the allegedly existing mud in front of the Straits of Gibraltar, confirmed even by Aristotle. And it is true for Plato's geological descriptions of Athens. And it is true for so many other details. Not to mention that we know for sure that many details were really believed by Plato, such as the cyclical catastrophism. This all undermines the idea of a recognizable fiction. And Julia Annas is silent about it. Julia Annas tries to foster the modern myth of Atlantis as a land of "wonders" [p. 53]. But the numbers and sizes mentioned in the Atlantis story are not bigger than the biggest buildings, armies, etc. in the Histories of Herodotus, including the number of years, as we already have seen. There is no magic and there are no monsters in Atlantis. Even the ominous oreichalkos is only second to ordinary gold. And what about the cold northern wind in Atlantis, or the missing rain in summer? Surely a blessed country, just like Herodotus' Egypt or Mesopotamia. But a paradise full of "wonders"? Not really. K.T. Frost was right when he wrote: "The whole description of the Athenian state in these dialogues seems much more fictitious than that of Atlantis itself." [Frost (1913) p. 195] To depict Atlantis as an exotic country, Julia Annas puts forward the elephants as an argument. But are elephants really "exotic"? They are surely "foreign", and this is what Plato says about the building style in Atlantis: Barbaric. But "foreign" is not the same as "exotic". There is a lack of fascination with Atlantis, especially when we think of the drinking of a bull's blood. Greeks thought this to be poisenous (what it isn't, by the way). Atlantis is not exotic since it does not evoke a positive fascination. It is foreign. We cannot agree that Atlantis became so popular because it has an exotic fascination. If this was the case, why is e.g. Eldorado, the fabled city of gold in America, not much more popular? Then, Julia Annas tries to foster the modern myth of the truth assertions. She argues that a story that is "presented emphatically as true", that "insists on its own truth" would show a "familiar feature of fiction" [p. 53]. But the claim that the Atlantis story insists emphatically on its own truth is a modern myth. If we look at the many alleged truth assertions, some turn out to be there only in translation, some turn out to be casual and inconspicuous statements, and some even turn out to be quite the opposite! When Critias says that something sounds incredible but that he has to report it as it was handed down to him, is this really a "truth" assertion? It is rather the opposite! (And if this was a sign of fiction, why not in case of Herodotus' Histories?) No, Julia Annas' idea of a "convention in storytelling" [p. 53] which allegedly makes an invention of the story transparent to the readers does not work. Such conventions developed only later, as she says herself about the Greek novel. Plato's Atlantis story is not a fictional novel avant la lettre. It may still be an invention, though, but if so, it must be meant as a deceptive story, not recognizable to the readers. (We do not continue to unfold the implications of this latter possibility at this place, which leads to nowhere, too.) An invented story? The academic authors put forward by Julia Annas who allegedly demonstrate that Plato's Athens-Atlantis story is an invented and fictional (or deceptive) story are disappointing. These are Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Christopher Gill, and Diskin Clay. Vidal-Naquet was a self-proclaimed essayist, and yes, he really was one. Also Christopher Gill changed his mind about questions concerning Atlantis without bothering too much with arguments, just as it pleased him. All three argue with the 9,000 years of Atlantis which is no real argument, no matter how you look at it. All three present very distorted versions of the reception history of Plato's Atlantis, full of modern myths. How do they want to recognize ancient myths, if they cannot recognize modern myths? All three argue with Aristotle's alleged statement against the existence of Atlantis. But this does not exist, as was demonstrated in 2010, one year before Julia Annas wrote her article. Unfortunately, Julia Annas avoids any comment about the striking contradictions among her preferred proponents of the Atlantis invention hypothesis, Julia Annas and Plato's Atlantis https://www.atlantis-scout.de/atlantis-julia-annas-engl.htm 1 von 5 30.05.2020, 20:19