Humanities desk
< October 1	<< Sep \| October \| Nov >>	October 3 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Humanities Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

October 2

Searching for a specific philosopher

Greetings

I remember reading about a philosopher in high school who argued that everything was allowed to get power and everything was allowed for maintaining said power. Power was defined as control over people and state, if I remember correctly. My question is which philosopher made these statements? Was it Machiavelli? Or was it maybe Nietzsche? I do not remember who it was and I have lost my old school books because of a water damage in the basement. My previous internet searches have led to no results. Do you know who made these statements, or to which school of thought he could have belonged?

Thank you for your answers--2A02:1205:505D:1BB0:E033:76F7:E13F:9CA4 (talk) 19:25, 2 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

See Will to power. The concept comes from Nietzsche. --Xuxl (talk) 00:29, 3 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Strange, I would have thought that it was closer to Machiavelli. Anyway, thank you very much for the link!--2A02:1205:505D:1BB0:78B6:6FD8:577D:9CF6 (talk) 09:07, 3 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Searching for another philosopher

Hello again, honored Ladies and Gentlemen

It is me again, I am also searching for a French philosopher - if I remember correctly - who ask the following question: what if we are a part of the dream of a higher being? His arguments were that it could be possible that we are all a part of the dream of a sleeping, immensely powerful being who could bring about the end of our existence, if it wakes up. This idea was partly based on the "evil genius" idea by René Descartes. Do you know the name of this philosopher who formulated this idea?

Thank you for your answers — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:1205:505D:1BB0:E033:76F7:E13F:9CA4 (talk) 19:39, 2 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it is René Descartes. See Evil demon. --Xuxl (talk) 00:31, 3 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Is it? I thought that it was another philosopher who worked the concept out even more than Descartes did.--2A02:1205:505D:1BB0:78B6:6FD8:577D:9CF6 (talk) 09:07, 3 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Related but much younger: Nick Bostrom. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 09:12, 3 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting, thank you very much for the link!--2A02:1205:505D:1BB0:5C13:A01F:BDDF:48EC (talk) 16:18, 3 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Henri Bergson wrote a work which has been translated as Dreams and The World of Dreams. This may be what your are looking for.John Z (talk) 00:40, 4 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting, thank you very much for the link!--2A02:1205:505D:1BB0:BC3D:1D42:FC60:2208 (talk) 13:12, 4 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for posting that, I had no idea who Bergson was. Norbert Wiener's book Cybernetics has a chapter called "Newtonian and Bergsonian time" and I didn't understand the reference. I guess it is about Bergson's idea of duration_ which I also didn't know about. Neat. 173.228.123.166 (talk) 07:27, 5 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]