Aristotle and Atlantis - What did the philosopher really think about Plato's island empire?

by Thorwald C. Franke

Aristotle considered Plato’s Atlantis to be an invention; so we read time and again – but is this really true? Until the late 19th century, academia still held the opposite opinion. How did this shift in opinion take place? And was it justified?

Over 100 works from the Atlantis and Aristotle literature, from antiquity to the Renaissance, from the 18th to the 21st century, were examined in order to track down the truth. A scientific adventure regarding Aristotle’s opinion about Atlantis unfolds step by step, starting 200 years ago and reaching into the present.

What did the great philosopher and disciple of Plato really think? All the relevant passages from Aristotle’s works as well as all the steps taken during the literary research are documented in the appendix.

136 pages, Paperback

First published October 15, 2012

About the author

Thorwald C. Franke became known as an author on Plato's Atlantis with several articles and his first book in 2006: Based on the Histories of Herodotus he addressed the question, if Atlantis could be a real place, and if so, where and when. As initiator of the Atlantis Research Charter and participant of the Atlantis Conference 2008 in Athens he continued his work, and published in 2010 his second book: Did Aristotle really think, that Atlantis was Plato's invention?

Reviews

[Mark Lyell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This excellent book refutes the idea that Aristotle was an Atlantis sceptic.

Anyone who is interested in the truth behind the Atlantis story, would become sceptical on learning that many academics assert that Aristotle, Plato's pupil, didn't believe in his story as historical fact, and that the tale is therefore some sort of allegory. Some enthusiastic Atlantologists have also accepted this standard interpretation of Aristotle's opinion, to the detriment of their own research and arguments. I have even seen it falsely claimed that Aristotle called Plato a liar !

However as Thorwald Franke's brilliant and painstaking research shows, the basis for this opinion is erroneous and stems from a mistaken nineteenth century interpretation which has been copied and even compounded by subsequent authors. The book is a very thorough analysis of all of Aristotle's statements which could possibly relate to Atlantis, and contains a wealth of well-referenced material from many sources.

The conclusion is that there is nothing to show that Aristotle was an Atlantis unbeliever, and that on the contrary, the available evidence indicates that he had no fundamental objection to its existence, and that indeed many of his ideas support it. This book is indispensable for any serious truth-seeking Atlantis researcher.

[Garrett Brock · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book dispels a myth about academic error. If you're really looking for the bottom of the rabbit hole about Atlantis, this isn't it, but it's close. The author is at least sober; supremely sober compared to ninety-five percent of other authors writing about Atlantis. Thank goodness I didn't have to learn German to read this. This is book is why many classical scholars learn German, for some reason Germans lead the world in Classical commentary. Those Germans man, always with the attention to detail. Thorwald Franke writes a short book about a few sentences, complete with diagrams. Where scholars before him were shoddy, Franke is meticulous.