An A-Z Guide To The Search For Plato's Atlantis

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  • NEWS September 2023

    NEWS September 2023

    September 2023. Hi Atlantipedes, At present I am in Sardinia for a short visit. Later we move to Sicily and Malta. The trip is purely vacational. Unfortunately, I am writing this in a dreadful apartment, sitting on a bed, with access to just one useable socket and a small Notebook. Consequently, I possibly will not […]Read More »
  • Joining The Dots

    Joining The Dots

    I have now published my new book, Joining The Dots, which offers a fresh look at the Atlantis mystery. I have addressed the critical questions of when, where and who, using Plato’s own words, tempered with some critical thinking and a modicum of common sense.Read More »
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Plato’s Dialogues

Plato’s Dialogues belong to a genre of literary prose known as Socratic Dialogues that developed in Greece at the turn of the fourth century BC. The best-known examples are the dialogues of Plato and Xenophon’s Socratic works.

There are 25 known dialogues attributed to Plato(a) including the source of the Atlantis story – Timaeus and Critias.

I have read that “it’s true that in Plato’s dialogues he never speaks explicitly on behalf of himself. Still, there has been a wide consensus to interpret the dialogues such that the always-present character Socrates represents either the original Socrates (in the ‘early’ dialogues) or Plato (in the ‘middle’ and ‘late’ dialogues).”>Plato prefers to communicate indirectly with his audience using the interlocutors in the dialogues to do it for him.<

It is beyond my competence to discuss such niceties and will happily leave it to others. However, it seems to me that our knowledge of Plato’s philosophy is derived primarily from the dialogues, even though he did not write them in the first person.>Incidentally, Plato was rather critical of the value of writing as he considered verbal communication superior to the written word, an echo of the strongly held opinion of his mentor, Socrates, who wrote nothing.<

(a) Dialogues of Plato (archive.org)