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For HNer's that would like to read the account by Plato, most of his discussion is in Critias, here: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1571/1571-h/1571-h.htm htt

For HNer's that would like to read the account by Plato, most of his discussion is in Critias, here: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1571/1571-h/1571-h.htm https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1571/1571-h/1571-h.htm It's one of the shortest dialogs and can quickly be read. Another brief part is in Timaeus, here: https://classics.mit.edu/Plato/timaeus.html https://classics.mit.edu/Plato/timaeus.html I'd CTRL+F for 'Atlantis' to get the relevant part, as the rest of the text isn't too relevant to the Atlantis myth. It's a very short passage, relatively. That's all that time has left us from Plato's accounts, just the two stories. It;s really not all that much, considering the ink split since then.

empath-nirvana 3y ago
Reading it like this is the source of the confusion that so many people have about the nature of the story -- people walk away with the impression that the dialogue is in some sense "about" atlantis, and if you read the entire dialogue it's clear that Plato is interested in far more abstract concerns -- it's about the nature of things, the creation of the universe and the nature of divinity and consciousness. Given that context the idea that Plato just randomly included a random story about an island blowing up as factual reporting is ridiculous. He rolls directly from atlantis to talking about the Demiurge -- which, btw, is another myth that seems to have been entirely the invention of Plato.