Concept
Power (social and political)
Overview
ability to influence the behavior of others
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
There are men who desire power simply for the sake of the happiness it will bring; these belong chiefly to political parties. Other men have the same yearning, even when power means visible disadvantages, the sacrifice of their happiness, and well-being; they are the ambitious. Other men, again, are only like dogs in a manger, and will have power only to prevent its falling into the hands of others on whom they…
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Will to Power
Names Power several times; states what Power is.
For when wee say, one Power is subject to another Power, the meaning either is, that he which hath the one, is subject to him that hath the other; or that the one Power is to the other, as the means to the end. For wee cannot understand, that one Power hath Power over another Power; and that one Power can have Right or Command over another: For Subjection, Command, Right, and Power are accidents, not of Powers, but…
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
The chapter “CHAPTER XLII. OF POWER ECCLESIASTICALL” is titled for Power; names Power several times.
And therefore with reason we look on them as liable still to the same change. Nor have we of ACTIVE power (which is the more proper signification of the word power) fewer instances. Since whatever change is observed, the mind must collect a power somewhere able to make that change, as well as a possibility in the thing itself to receive it.
John Locke, An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1
The chapter “CHAPTER XXI. OF POWER.” is titled for Power; names Power several times.
Philosophers who discussed Power (social and political)
- Pierre Bourdieu
- Gilles Deleuze
- Heraclitus
- John Stuart Mill
- Simone Weil
- Intellectual
- Jean Baudrillard
- Axel Honneth
- Giorgio Agamben
- Michel Foucault
- Johannes Althusius
- Byung-Chul Han
Related ideas
- The Prince
- Feminism
- Italy
- Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
- Authority
- Personality
- Marxism
- Max Weber
- Authoritarianism
- Niccolò Machiavelli
- Nation state
- Martin Buber
- Property
- Political science
- Persuasion
- Russia
- Singapore
- Institution
- Western Europe
- United States
- Constructivism (philosophy of science)
- Cultural hegemony
- Reason
- Logic
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Cynicism (philosophy).
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