Ever since Socrates proposed as a solution to the ‘ills for the cities’ the idea that either philosophers become kings or kings become philosophers has influenced the theory and practice of politics. Yet, despite its prominence and continuing appeal, the philosopher king has rarely been subjected to rigorous philosophical analysis. One of the few exceptions is Modern Philosopher Kings, Haig Patapan’s marvellous study of this idea that has ‘mesmerized and tantalized’ (p. 4) since its original formulation.

The anchor of the book is the ‘paradox of the philosopher king’. It can be summarised as follows: The philosopher king, by uniting philosophy and politics, wisdom and power, is presented as the answer to fundamental moral, social, and political questions—ultimately, even to the question of how to secure justice. The problem is that the two realms of politics and philosophy are in a less than harmonious relationship. The philosopher immerses herself in the vita contemplativa. Far removed from the chaos of the agora, she seeks wisdom in the hallowed halls of the academy and looks down on politics with contempt. This hostility is, of course, mutual. Politics elevates the vita activa over the vita contemplativa and, thus, sees the philosopher as a useless brooder at best and a dangerous moralist at worst. This unedifying situation gives rise to the paradox:

The paradox of the philosopher king is that it simultaneously says the philosopher king is possible and it is not; that philosophy and politics can be combined and they cannot, and more generally, that justice in this life is possible and it is not (p. 18).

The idea of the philosopher king thus leads directly to fundamental questions: the relationship between politics and philosophy, wisdom and power, virtue and vice, justice and injustice. As such, Patapan claims that an engagement with the figure, and the resolution of the paradox, of the philosopher king can help us to imagine new ways to reconcile seemingly competing values and avoid the tempting but unedifying conclusion that humanity is tragically destined to suffer injustice (pp. 4, 8, 186).

The bulk of the book is devoted to the question of how the paradox can be resolved. Patapan identifies six modern attempts to actualise the philosopher king and, in six corresponding chapters, denies that any of them can successfully unite wisdom and power. The emergence of the prophet, the Christian prince, and the pope prompted a new conception of the relationship between politics and philosophy, primarily (but not exclusively) inspired by Christian thought. Yet, these new versions of the philosopher king were soon challenged by their inherent instabilities and, more importantly, the critical influence of modern (Enlightenment) thought that fundamentally questioned revealed religion (pp. 52–53).

A second modern instantiation of the philosopher king, the public intellectual, cannot transcend the paradox either. This ‘tragic hero’ (pp. 66–69) loses their standing with both success and failure: if they become too influential in practical politics, they will inevitably be accused of abandoning their critical position, which, in turn, undermines their position as a public intellectual. If, however, they remain only marginally influential, no one will listen to their voice in the first place. The public intellectual is, thus, trapped between the Scylla of ‘selling out’ and the Charybdis of insignificance.

The artist seems to be another contender for the title of modern philosopher king. Once again, however, Patapan denies the conclusive resolution of the paradox: While the majority of artistic work merely entertains and pleases the powerful, the art form with the most obvious critical potential—poetry—has been rendered obsolete by technical modernity. Unfortunately, the most subversive form of art has become ‘a child of the past, a forlorn hope and an unfulfilled promise’ (p. 99). In his chapter on the ‘hidden philosopher king’, Patapan discusses two distinct phenomena: on the one hand, the personal advisor to kings and, on the other, the (impersonal) institutionalisation of the advisor in a bureaucratic architecture. Through an outline of Machiavelli (pp. 105–115), a comparison between Socrates and Confucius (pp. 115–124), and sketches of Hegel and Weber (pp. 124–127), Patapan ably demonstrates that the paradox is maintained in this context too.

The personal advisor to the king faces the same risk as the public intellectual—the loss of their critical voice with increased proximity to the source of power. In its impersonal expression of the modern philosopher king, the bureaucratic state merely reinstates the paradox of the philosopher king in the vernacular of the modern state. The penultimate modern attempt to actualise the idea of the philosopher king is the scientist. Here, rule is justified on the ground of universal and demonstrable scientific truth and, again, leads to two different scenarios: the scientist as advisor, who faces challenges as both an advisor and a scientist (p. 141); and a scientific king (or the rule of technocrats), who is challenged by the postmodern suspicion towards science as merely another ‘discursive practice’ (p. 145) or the well-known criticism of technocracy as an inherently anti-democratic mode of governing.

This latter point, finally, leads to the suggestion that ‘the people’ might qualify as a collective modern philosopher king. In an analysis that is steeped in democratic theory, Patapan once more identifies two thrusts of this argument. The first is the embedding of philosophy in a multiplicity of democratic institutions. This option, however, comes at the price of fragmenting and thus undermining the authority of the philosopher king (p. 163). The alternative is the proposal by epistemic and deliberative democrats who pin their democratic hopes on the idea of ‘the people’; obviously, though, this theory finds it notoriously difficult to specify the idea of ‘the people’ and to demonstrate that the ‘wisdom of the many’ can approximate that of the traditional philosopher king (pp. 165–166).

The first six chapters of the book, then, arrive at an impasse. But Patapan has one final ace up his sleeve. In the Conclusion, he introduces the idea that philosophers might wield their influence indirectly through their writings. This conception of ‘writing as ruling’ allows kings to become philosophical and philosophers to become the intellectual guides of rulers. Crucially, though, even this ‘conclusive resolution’ of the paradox does not come without inherent limitations (p. 179) and severe dangers (p. 183). Most importantly, the struggle between philosophers and their followers never remains confined to the realm of ideas but ‘is arguably the source of those grim and brutal political struggles that seem far removed from the hushed tones and subtleties of philosophical contest and contention’ (p. 186). Regardless of whether one agrees, this casts doubt on the predominant conception of justice that Patapan seems to subscribe to (although he is, unfortunately, cryptic on this point), and creates a tension in his overarching argument to which I will return below.

The 190 pages of the book are saturated with Patapan’s erudition, which is neither limited to the western canon nor to a singular discipline. Of course, there is a fine line between erudition and pretentiousness, and in some moments Patapan clearly gravitates towards the latter. This, however, is a mere stylistic (and perhaps subjective) quibble, which in no way should detract from Patapan’s impressive intellectual achievement. The book brims with fascinating ideas and original analyses, and it unfolds its full potential in combination with Patapan’s method of meticulously developing a red thread that runs through each chapter. Its main strength is that it demonstrates how the idea of the philosopher kings brings us up against some of the most critical moral, social, and political questions—paramount among them, the question of how to secure justice.

However, this broad focus also reveals the central tension haunting the book’s overarching argument: For Patapan, as seen, the figure to resolve the paradox of the philosopher king will be able to empower wisdom and ennoble politics to secure justice. Yet, in Patapan’s sole modern scenario in which the paradox is resolved—writing as ruling—the influence of philosopher king(s) inevitably generates conflicts and ‘brutal political struggles’, and it is not clear how this squares with Patapan’s own idea of justice. Partly, of course, this has to do with Patapan’s reluctance to treat justice as anything else than the (purportedly) self-evident result flowing from the unity of wisdom and power.

More importantly, though, Patapan’s conception of the modern philosopher king suggests a conclusion that might be more radical than he himself intended: political theory’s infatuation with the idea of justice, or at least a certain idea of justice, is theoretically and practically flawed. The logical consequence of this, then, is either to develop a less abstract notion of justice, one that is better attuned to the deep diversity and conflictual nature of political life, or to shift our theoretical attention more seriously to alternative normative concepts. Patapan, unfortunately, does not seriously entertain this idea, which is why, for all its laudable erudition, the book suffers from a lack of engagement with the realist tradition in contemporary political theory. Such an engagement would, in my opinion, have turned this very strong into a potentially ground-breaking book.