This is the first essay in The Big Ideas, a special section of The Times’s philosophy series, The Stone, in which more than a dozen notable thinkers and writers — including Elena Ferrante, Cornel West, Yuval Harari, Gen. Wesley Clark and others — answer the question, “What is power?”

The term “power” is everywhere in our world. Thinking of it, the phrase “word inflation” comes to mind. Much of what we e​n​counter in print, on television and in advertising centers on the concept of power.

But what is that concept? What is power? The truth is that the word bears an impossible burden of interpretation. Definitions are myriad; the dictionary lists an unusual number of meanings. Surely power is what it is — that which enables us to influence, if not indeed determine, the course of our lives.