In the exploration of Jorge Luis Borges's work, several interconnected themes stand out, particularly Metaphysics, Idealism, Reality, and Power. These concepts are not treated in isolation but rather engage in a "chiasmic relationship," where metaphysical discussions often carry political connotations, and conversely, his overtly political texts tend to slide towards metaphysics and theology. Borges is often perceived as a writer dealing in abstractions, literary puzzles, and unsolvable philosophical riddles, a perception he cultivated himself. **Metaphysics** Borges directly engaged with metaphysical ideas, often positioning them within the realm of literature. He suggested that he was neither a philosopher nor a metaphysician but rather exploited or explored the literary possibilities of philosophy. For Borges, metaphysics could be seen as a branch of fantastic literature. He found value in religious and philosophical ideas not solely for their truth claims but also for their aesthetic merit, their singularity, and their capacity to marvel, viewing this interest as an index of an "essential skepticism". His work frequently straddles the line between literature and philosophy, two activities he saw as both close and impenetrable to each other. A central metaphysical preoccupation for Borges was the "contradiction of the time that passes and the identity that endures". This relates to the philosophical problem of the synthesis of temporal succession. Through analyses of thinkers like Hume and Kant in connection with his stories, Borges's texts challenge the limits of empiricism and transcendentalism by exploring how belief functions or how transcendental operations are empirically inscribed. His interest extends to theological concepts, such as the name of God, seeing it as a hypothesis sufficient for creation. His "metaphysical" or "mystical" stories are often those that delve into philosophical paradoxes. **Idealism** Idealism, in various forms, is a significant philosophical tradition that informs Borges's work. He engages with thinkers like Plato and Berkeley. The Platonic idea of reality as a degraded reproduction of a transcendental original, where our world is made up of imperfect reflections of perfect ideas, is discussed in relation to Borges. He also incorporates Berkeley's immaterialism, the doctrine that things exist by virtue of being perceived, often framing it through the idea of God as a permanent, ubiquitous perceiver who prevents the universe from being annihilated or capriciously reconstituted. Borges rearticulates idealism, sometimes with political connotations. He can present idealism in a "conspiratorial key," where reality is a lie or hallucination framed within a larger, truer world, suggesting we live in a deceit engineered by a higher power. Notably, in the "Ode Written in 1966," Borges shifts from Berkeley's idea of a divine "Spectator" to a divine "dreamer," leading to the concept that reality itself is a dream or fiction, a notion explored in stories like "The Circular Ruins". This distortion of the idealist tradition merges philosophy and fiction. He explicitly admits the "hallucinatory nature of the world" as idealists do. Borges draws upon various sources for this idealist model of reality as an emanation or degraded copy, including Gnosticism, the Kabbalah, Buddhism, and Leibniz. **Reality** Borges consistently questions the stability, definition, and fundamental nature of reality. His works explore how reality can be "perforated by fiction," how memory can displace the present, or how actuality might be a staged representation. These explorations expose the "precariousness of the categories that rule our perception of it". He views reality not as a simple "given" but as an "administered" construct. Within his idealist framework, reality is frequently depicted as a deceit, a hallucination, a dream, or a second (and weaker) reality embedded within a more primordial, truer one. The idea of reality being dreamed by a superior being is a recurrent theme, seen in "The Circular Ruins". "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" offers a striking example of an invented reality, Tlön, which through dissemination and intellectual perception, begins to flood and replace our own reality, altering history, science, philosophy, and language. Objects in Tlön, called "hrönir," are produced merely by conjuring up the idea of them, illustrating the power of perception derived from idealism. Borges's admission of the "hallucinatory nature of the world" is central to his perspective. The imposition of a representation as reality is a fundamental concept related to power. Borges's frequent use of framed narratives serves as a formal principle reflecting this idea of nested realities or layers of illusion. By understanding reality as a fictional construct or representation, Borges implicitly makes claims about politics and power. **Power** Power is a central theme in Borges's work, deeply intertwined with his metaphysical and idealist conceptions of reality. Power is often defined as the ability to impose a reality, a representation, or a fiction onto others. Political power, in particular, is concerned with the imposition of a specific reality. Borges connects the idealist notion of a higher power projecting a fictitious reality to the political realm, suggesting that metaphysics can be read as a "vastest of conspiracy theories". Institutions or figures – secret societies, companies, sorcerers, or even gangsters – are depicted as superimposing their own order, fiction, or dream onto reality. The "Company" in "The Lottery in Babylon" illustrates this, expanding its control to encompass all public and private life and causality, its power described as having "ecclesiastical, metaphysical value". Power becomes transcendental when it is absolute. Borges draws a direct link between totalitarian regimes, such as Nazism and Communism, which impose a "symmetry with an appearance of order," and fictional constructions like Tlön. He suggests that any order aiming to be absolute is both tyrannical and absurd. Totalitarianism can be understood as a partial order (a subset of reality) that expands to encompass the entirety of reality (the superset). The acceptance of a representation as reality, even when known to be fictional, is a key mechanism of power, as this "noncoercive acceptance" transforms the representation into reality. The nested structures in Borges's work, like the "god behind the god" in his chess sonnets, also reflect power hierarchies. Power, ultimately, can be measured by the degree to which the imposed fiction is believable; total power corresponds to a completely believable, divinely imposed fiction (our world). When the question of power is taken to its ultimate source within Borges's metaphysical framework, it necessarily leads back to the concept of God. Power is also related to the delegation or snatching away of rights, which establishes forms of representation. The political dimension of his framing technique reinforces the idea of layered realities and the imposition of fiction. In summary, Borges's exploration of Metaphysics, Idealism, Reality, and Power reveals a worldview where these concepts are deeply intertwined. He utilizes philosophical ideas to construct fictional realities that challenge our perceptions and expose the mechanisms by which order and power are imposed upon the world, suggesting that our perceived reality may be a complex, perhaps fictional, construct administered by unseen forces or systems. This leads to a compelling tension between the historical and the eternal, the political and the metaphysical, illuminating each through the lens of the other.