Abstract

The sense of power has a double face : on the one hand, it is the will to power as a force impelling to action; on the other hand, it is a basic state of mind which essentially conditions our intellectual approach to reality. It is in this second perspective that we see why the interpretation of a series of relationships between man and reality in terms of power, inconceivable among the Zunis or the Arapesh, is natural to the Western mind, or, at any rate, is more or less in agreement with its general attitude. As Mannheim observed, “We enter at birth a world which has already been interpreted, a world which has already been made comprehensible, and each of whose parts has a meaning.” In this study we propose to examine to what degree and through what modes of expression this age-old spiritual conditioning has influenced our view of the world and of the realities of existence.