The Philosopher King Perfected: Prophet Muhammad ﷺ
On What We Had and Betrayed
The stage of our modern world finds itself covered with the muddy footsteps of kings flaunting about, their crowns basking shamelessly in the center spotlight. As commoners watch in dismay, wanting and wishing for an alternative, they flutter around all the same, believing their authority eternal.
Their extravagance and ambivalence to the cruelty they cultivate is a tragedy recognized by all near and far, yes, but the depth of this pain echoes a longstanding betrayal. Their apathetic performance would be a lesser tragedy if they did not claim to be loyal to the greatest leader there ever was. Alas, though, they do. The stark contrast between what they could have been and what they have instead chosen to embody bleeds a unique sorrow, particularly in a time where we collectively witness injustice upon injustice. The prayers we whisper and legacies we revere pay heed to this truth every hour.
In Plato’s Republic, the famed philosopher reflects upon the notion of an ideal, perfectly just society and what it entails. He argues that the most worthy ruler, the one capable of ushering in such a state, is the “philosopher king.” While it has long been an imagined ideal alone, with few figures historically being labeled as suitable for the title, there is one indisputable heir to the claim. I argue that there is no greater example in history of someone who meets and transcends this model than the Prophet Muhammadﷺ.
The philosopher king is introduced as the ideal ruler in Book V of The Republic:
“Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy… cities will never have rest from their evils.” (Republic, 473c-d)
According to Plato, the ideal ruler must possess certain characteristics, all of which the Prophet more than embodied. Primarily, he defines the philosopher king as someone who loves truth and wisdom above all. Even before he received revelation at 40, the Prophet was praised in society for his character and virtue, known as Al-Amin, the Trustworthy. Plato goes on to explain that the ruler must carry within him nothing less than moral excellence; the Qur'an itself refers to the Prophet as such in 68:4, “Indeed, you are of a great moral character.”
The philosopher king is just, moderate, wise, and rational. He is courageous yet never arrogant; he is notably reluctant to rule — rather than serving out of desire, he does so out of duty — for he knows the love of power is an inherently corrupting force. He lives simply, uninterested in excessive material wealth. He pursues knowledge and insight into the ‘Form of the Good’ — the ultimate source, the ‘beyond being’. Beyond simply being in possession of these traits, he acknowledges that he must return to the “cave” to guide others through them as his mission requires.
Fitting the Mold
If the philosopher king must love truth and wisdom, who better exemplifies this than RasulAllah ﷺ? If the Word of God is the ultimate source of truth and wisdom, and the Prophet is the walking Quran — whatever scripture instructed, he honored and lived by, beyond what we can even fully conceptualize. He was devotion to truth personified, living and breathing its sanctity. His moral and educational role as a leader thus never faltered. It was, more than anything, the crux of his reality, the light that awakened people of ignorance to a new life.
The Qur’an 62:2 reveals the Prophet was sent to teach and purify, as elaborated in the hadith: “I was sent to perfect good character.” As the enlightener of the masses, the Qur’an in 14:1 tells us he brought people from darkness to light; in 3:110, enjoining right, forbidding wrong. He, like the philosopher, returned from cave Hira to guide others, humbly yet committedly. Hence, in this holy endeavor to spread light, we call him Rahmatul Lil Alameen — a mercy to mankind. True to what mercy would entail, his humility further points to his unique status as a worthy leader. He ruled as a man of the people in the truest sense, as his leadership was intrinsically rooted in servitude.
He followed an ascetic leadership style, living simply, with no hoarded wealth or luxuries, and a modest home next to the mosque, where he often slept on a mat that left marks on his side. Yet he was still exceedingly generous, and in his wisdom emphasized moderation over a complete shunning of the world, understanding and living by the message of the Qur’an, 4:77: “The enjoyment of this world is little…”
Justice as the core of governance is another key component of both Plato’s proposal and the Prophetic model. The philosopher king enforces justice without personal gain. The Qur’an emphasizes this selfless pursuit in 5:8: “O you who believe! Stand out firmly for Allah as bearers of witness with justice.” Plato further reasons that the philosopher king ensures justice by aligning the soul and the city. Islam came as a social justice movement to a society in desperate need of one, with universal truths that would extend beyond time and place. It emphasized the relationship between one’s soul and the society they’re in, and thus the profound truth that justice is the core of leadership, as had been the case with all prophets before him, and would be expected of those who succeeded him. Repeatedly throughout the Qur’an, justice is declared as a divine command, the life source of humanity, the bringer and proof of light on Earth. In every word and action, the Trustworthy reflected complete submission to this principle. As Plato writes that philosophers must be free from factionalism and serve the common good, so too did the Prophet ﷺ — uniting warring tribes, reconciling enemies, and building a just society in Medina. Recognizing that upholding justice and unity are key elements of abiding by and revering the truth, he lived his life promoting these virtues, thus embodying truth not abstractly but practically. His leadership ensured rights for all, including non-Muslims, through the Constitution of Medina. Moreover, as Plato reiterates that the philosopher hates falsehood, this sentiment is ascribed similarly to the Prophet ﷺ in the Quranic testimony of 53:3-4; “He does not speak from [his own] desire. It is nothing but a revelation revealed.”
Finally, the return to the cave is a central pillar of this comparison. The Allegory of the Cave illustrates the philosopher’s journey from ignorance to enlightenment, and their duty to return to guide others upon gaining truth. What else did the Prophet ﷺ do if not spend his life guiding others from ignorance to light? The Qur’an mirrors this precisely in 14:1: “[This is] a Book which We have revealed to you [O Muhammad], that you might bring mankind out of darkness into light.”
Transcending the Title
It is thus not sufficient to say the Prophet ﷺ merely exemplifies Plato’s philosopher king — rather, he surpasses it. He is the ultimate, perfected creation: the most beloved of the Beloved. He transcends any label that attempts to do justice to him, for he not only fulfills the people’s need, but exceeds it in his selflessness and ever-present light. While Plato’s king is wise but speculative; the Prophet is wise and assured. Plato imagined the ideal, the Prophet ﷺ embodied it in both spiritual and temporal realms.
The key distinction in what qualifies as the source of knowledge inevitably furthers this point of transcendence. Plato’s king seeks truth through reason; the Prophet receives it from the Divine. Plato’s “Form of the Good” as the ultimate reality is an idea, but God is the sole reality and source behind all good, truth, and justice. On that note, revelation is thus the highest form of guidance. Hence, the Prophet ﷺ surpasses the philosopher in this regard, as he is guided by revelation rather than seeking through conjecture. Thus, as Qur’an 9:33 states:
“It is He who sent His Messenger with guidance and the religion of truth…”
The Prophet ﷺ is not, after all, a hypothetical ideal, but a real figure whose well-documented life is available for us to know. Even the gentlest skim will awaken one to what an exceptional human being and leader he truly was. His emotional intelligence and understanding of human nature — elements not found in Plato’s account — were core to his superior leadership. His fundamental understanding of human psychology, as mirrored in his akhlaq, exhibits the core of what it means to love and uphold truth. If the essential truth is love, as it is exemplified through mercy, compassion, and empathy, then no philosopher could ever better embody the substance of loving and upholding truth than RasulAllah ﷺ. From the dawn of time to the last day, what any spirit seeks in its leader is one who carries with them the sweetness of love in all they do. That is what it means to be in alignment with all that is just and true. And surely, RasulAllah ﷺ carried the sweetness of love until it became him. They were, and remain, indistinguishable from one another.
Gone but Not Forgotten
One might consider, after such an examination, that in his ultimate wisdom and knowledge of the truth, the Prophet would understand, of course, the depth of his absence. His mercy and devoted commitment to justice thus meant he would leave his community (and the world) with the knowledge of how to keep this system in operation. As the final and blessed messenger, he left us with a formula for a post-prophetic governance model, knowing the Ummah would need it. Enter Hadith Thaqlayn, in which he remarked, “I leave behind two weighty things, if you stick to both you will never go astray after me: the Book of Allah and my progeny.” Rather than abandoning the ummah he wept for, the Prophet ﷺ left behind not a vacuum, but both a manual and a successor(s) who could effectively sustain the model of the philosopher king, and thus maintain justice in society.
Accordingly, I believe none continued the legacy of the philosopher king better than Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib ع. True to the ideal, Imam Ali never sought power, even after the Prophet ﷺ affirmed his leadership at Ghadir when he declared for all to hear:
“Whosoever I am his leader, Ali is his leader.”
When hordes of people flocked to him after the death of the third caliph, 27 years after Ghadir, pleading for his leadership, he accepted — not for love of power, but for his reverence of knowledge and justice, and to uphold the truth he was entrusted with.
Aside from his reluctance to rule, his state of intellectual excellence set him apart. If Plato envisioned the philosopher king as the one who best embodies knowledge, then after the Prophet ﷺ, Ali was precisely that man, as is echoed in the Prophet’s other famous remark:
“I am the city of knowledge, and Ali is its gate.”
In his spiritual excellency and its translation into his jurisprudence, he embodied the philosopher king ideal in both metaphysical vision and practical governance. Remarkably underappreciated, this truth is furthered when noting that over a millennium ago, centuries after The Republic, we find the principles of his wise and just rule not in a theoretical dialogue, but enshrined in his letter to Malik al-Ashtar, a living charter of ethical leadership that speaks even now to the conscience of rulers. So it only made sense then, when Imam Ali was eventually assassinated at the hands of tyrannical ideologues, that so too was the hope that justice and truth would ever again prevail as they did under the Prophet ﷺ and himself. The model of just post-prophetic governance had been hijacked instantaneously, a fact underscored by the subsequent murders of the Prophet’s grandsons — the progeny he specifically warned not to forsake. The poisoning of Imam Hasan ع and the brutal murder of Imam Hussain ع at Karbala, two men who stood firmly for truth against tyranny, ushered in a haunting era of darkness that we linger in still today. With their martyrdoms, the Islamic world entered an age of dislocation — one whose spiritual and moral rupture continues to reverberate in the faces of authoritarian kings and clerics. Needless to say, this subject alone warrants deep and sensitive examination; the aim is not to provide a comprehensive historical analysis, but to reflect upon the common thread that binds the tragedy of that shift to the fractured world we inherit now.
Today, that shift has drowned our potential in a pool of unending tears and trauma for our most vulnerable. In cutting the oxygen of Hadith Thaqlayn’s memory, autocrats claiming to represent the Muslim world with their blood-stained and self-appointed crowns have not only abandoned the philosopher king ideal — they have adopted its opposite. In place of the rich legacy that humanity needs and deserves, we have kings gifting jets to men who know only falsehood, and starving children who know only truth. We witness now the divulgence of ‘leaders’ who, rather than illuminating and following the legacies of the men they’re named after, tarnish and dishonor them. They have buried the ethos of the most beloved with the children their complicity kills. But just as martyrs never die, neither does the legacy of Rahmatul Lil Alameen. Today’s crownbearers may have exiled themselves from the city of knowledge, but it lives on, immune to the destruction their money buys.
Perhaps if we all truly took the time to understand the essence of this model, translating our love for our beloved master into the tangible justice he worked and called for, our world would look different today. Yet we have failed to do so, and the price for this perversion is paid for by children bearing the weight of bombs. The stage we watch in horror now is filled with characters following no scripture, no sunnah, no successor.
Despite the magnitude of this sorrow, hopelessness is a sin with too heavy a cost. The philosopher king we long for today awaits us still — let us pray that for the sake of humanity, his advent comes swiftly.
I used a screen reader for this work because I wanted to listen to something while working on something else. A few minutes in, I realized I’m not doing this work justice by doing so. It captured my attention in many places, mostly revolving around this idea of a “philosophical king”, which I’ve never heard before. The comparisons you’ve made between the RasulAllah ﷺ and a philosophical idea are rare yet profound, it really got me to think about how much of a mercy he is for us, amazing how eloquently you phrased it as well.
I always love seeing works that merge the world of philosophy and Islam (within its limits, of course), and this is definitely another to reflect on.
بارك الله فيك!
Jazak Allah khayr for this. I'm no scholar. Just trying to hold onto what little I understand. Post 43 (https://open.substack.com/pub/ehadnameh/p/43-the-proper-order-of-the-self?r=1ivlwg&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false) was a small attempt in that direction. Nothing polished. Just something simple, for those who find too many words get in the way. If it benefits even one heart, that's enough.