Professor James indicated that the aim of the book was as follows: ' T]o show that the true authors of Greek philosophy were not the Greeks but the people of North Africa, commonly called the Egyptians and the praise and honour falsely given to the Greeks for centuries belong to the people of North Africa, and therefore the African Continent. James opposed this idea and presented a compelling case that challenged the very foundation of Western civilization, as he argued that the Greeks stole and plagiarized from North African teachers in the ancient Egyptian mystery system.
In Stolen Legacy, James contested the hegemony of mainstream Western scholarship in the mid-20th century, a time when the so-called Greek miracle in philosophy and science had been assumed as a demonstrable fact for the previous 150 years.
