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About this quote

What does it mean?
The whole is a falsehood.
In plain terms
The totality is deceptive.
What can you take from it?
Relying on a complete picture can be misleading.

Where it applies

  • theory building
  • policy making
  • marketing

Putting it to work

  • question assumptions of totality

Questions to consider

  • When is a whole a useful model?
  • How to detect false wholes?

Another view

Some wholes are useful constructs.

More from Theodor Adorno

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  2. 'The world is systematized horror, but therefore it is to do the world too much honour to think of it entirely as a system; for its unifying principle is divis…

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  3. 'The very people who burst with proofs of exuberant vitality could easily be taken for prepared corpses, from whom the news of their not-quite-successful decea…

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