Plato Socrates

"Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people."
- Socrates(Plato)

That the above statement should be attributed to the Platonic Socrates is understandable, considering what Plato thought. For him the world of sense and sensible experience are but pale reflections of a higher, more enduring reality composed of a world of forms.

Knowledge is not to be gotten from sense experience, which only yield opinion, but rather knowledge is recollection of the archetypal forms etched upon the soul before it became attached to the physical body. Perfect things are singular, universal and permanent.

When it comes to human affairs however, how can such a mathematical construct come up with a figure, individual or society which reflects the perfect world of forms? Who and what is the perfect, man, the perfect society?

If there was a perfect man, would he not be particular, fleeting, and singular? How does one read of the world of forms the character of the perfect man? And how do such humans behave within a polity?

That Plato couldn't answer without betraying his own preference for a humane, egalitarian society ordered by principles of excellence based on the Intellectual and moral capacities of a Philosopher king; And since he was never concretised, he remained in the realm of ideals, and the society a utopia never actualised on earth.

In Islam however, The perfect man walked on earth, and governed his society in the realm of events, and taught them an idea which is intimately and profoundly lived in human experience; Din and Tauhid. He received revelation in the course of 23 years which he translates into every aspect of human living, until his companions are understood to be reservoirs of his Prophetic Knowledge taught to men.

As a brilliant Saint and Poet of our tradition said in description of this perfect man; He is the magnificent ocean in a glass.

He is timeless, in intention,virtue, volition and knowledge,and his period the most perfect of periods, and until today people recount his life, personality as much as they discuss the events which he participated in, and the Ideas which he brought to life.

Muhammad, Badr and Tauhid.

I think in Islam, that statement should be reformulated, it should state; Great Minds Discuss Great Ideas, Great Events and Great Peoples, and Weak Minds Discuss Small(or false) ideas,Small events and Small People(or their characters, or focus on the blemishes of great peoples and nations).