The whole / totality

Hegel's slogan "the true is the whole" means everything is interdependent and intelligible only together; since a totality shows itself only from its end, meaning arrives in retrospect.

Put simply Hegel's slogan "the true is the whole": everything depends on everything else and makes sense only together. A whole can be seen only from its end, so meaning comes only looking back.

Where to read it Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, Preface §20.

Miłosz has a name for what made Hegel's vision of wholeness so peculiarly seductive: "the Hegelian bite."

For Arendt, Hegel's philosophy was Western thought's last attempt to reunite being and thought, subject and object; whether it housed reality or imprisoned it, nobody could say.

Put simply Arendt: Hegel's philosophy was the West's last attempt to bring thought and reality, the mind and the world, back together. Nobody could say whether his system gave reality a home or locked it up.

What seduces people in Hegel, Shore judges, is wholeness itself: the promise that unity can finally be achieved and everything be seen as interwoven.

What dies with God is arguably not any being, physical or metaphysical, nor one religion's creed. The word names a belief that reality has order, purpose and wholeness.

Put simply Nietzsche's "God" arguably is not a being of any kind, nor one religion's beliefs. The word stands for the belief that reality has order and purpose and makes sense as a whole.

Sooner or later everyone concludes that the harmonious world where contradictions resolve, Hegel's end of history, is never coming. Unity cannot be found: life is nothing but difference.

Put simply Nietzsche: sooner or later we all realize that a harmonious world where every conflict is resolved, the end of history Hegel promised, is never coming. There is no unity to be found; life is all difference.

In some sense Nietzsche does not care whether a God actually exists; what counts is whether we believe in one and arrange our lives around that belief.

Marxism, for Lukács, stands or falls on totality: revolution comes only from a standpoint that sees the social whole, and trade-unionism plainly fails that test.

Put simply Lukács: Marxism depends on seeing society as one connected whole, its "totality". Revolution comes only from that view, and trade unions, which fight for better pay and hours, plainly lack it.

What stops me from absorbing another person into my totality is not some weakness in me, Levinas argues, but the other's infinity: they are radically other and cannot be possessed.

Put simply Levinas: I can never fully take in or own another person, and that is not a failing on my part. They are simply, endlessly other than me.

Structuralists meet Hegelians on totality: a sign means something only within a whole that holds everything in place, so faint echoes of Hegel persist even on the synchronic plane.

Put simply Shore hears a faint echo of Hegel in structuralism: a sign means something only inside a whole system that holds everything in place, even when the system is studied at a single moment.

Girard seduces the way Marx does, Shore thinks: by totality. Inside the system everything seems explained, as though glasses had been put on and the world's hidden secrets appeared.

Put simply Shore thinks Girard is seductive the way Marx is: his system seems to explain everything. Inside it, it feels like putting on glasses that reveal the world's hidden secrets.

Postmodernity, Shore says, is often defined through its fervent anti-Hegelianism: against Hegel's "the true is the whole," it denies any whole, order, stable meaning, subject or direction.

Put simply Shore: postmodernity is often defined by its fierce rejection of Hegel. Hegel said "the true is the whole"; postmodern thought denies there is any whole, order, stable meaning, self or direction.

Marx's decentering of the subject through class struggle was answered, late in the nineteenth century, by seeking a total history that reduces all of society's differences to one form.

Put simply Foucault: Marx pushed the individual from the center by explaining society through class struggle. Late in the 1800s, defenders of the self answered by seeking a "total history" that reduces all of society's differences to one pattern.

Patočka and Michalski shared a conviction: in the 1970s communist bloc Heidegger could counteract Hegel, showing meaning need not require wholeness, nor some kind of truth an inevitable destination.

Put simply Patočka and Michalski shared the conviction that, in the 1970s communist bloc, Heidegger could counter Hegel by showing that meaning can exist without wholeness, and truth without history marching to a fixed end.