José María Zamora Calvo
Autonomous University of Madrid, Spain. ORCID ID: 0000-0001-7101-2234. Email: jm.zamora@uam.es
Volume 10, Number 3, 2018 I Full Text PDF
DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v10n3.01
Received April 30, 2018; Accepted August 09, 2018; Published September 13, 2018.
Abstract
This paper explores the central thesis of the story of Atlantis put forward by Proclus in his Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus. For Proclus, who interprets this story eight centuries after his invention by Plato, the Atlantean account does not constitute the “birth of fiction”, nor a historical novel composed in order to critize the politics of his time, but a total historical account, “entirely true”. The conflict between ancient Athens, the city of Athena, and Atlantis, dedicated to Poseidon, exposes an episode of the constitution of the cosmos of which the history of humanity is a part. Therefore, the story of Atlantis is a representation of the new creation or second demiurgy.
Keywords: Atlantis; Proclus; Neoplatonism; Athena; Poseidon
