totalitet

Totalitet is a noun in Danish and Norwegian meaning totality, wholeness, or completeness. It is used to describe the complete set, system, or extent of something, as opposed to its individual parts. The term is cognate with the French totalité and the Latin totalitas, and appears across Germanic languages. In Danish and Norwegian, totalitet is the standard form; in Swedish and other Nordic languages, related usage exists, with totalitet used mainly in academic or technical contexts and other terms such as helhet often preferred for broader notions of wholeness.

In philosophy and the social sciences, totalitet refers to the abstraction of a whole from which parts can be inferred. It appears in discussions of systems thinking, where the totalitet of a social, economic, or ecological system is analyzed to understand emergent properties not visible at the level of individual components. The concept supports analyses that emphasize interconnections and the behavior of the system as an integrated whole rather than as a simple sum of parts.

In theology and religious studies, totalitet can denote the complete scope or extent of divine activity or cosmic order, framing the universe as an interconnected totality rather than a collection of isolated events. The term is less common in English-language texts, where totality or wholeness are typically used as translations.

Overall, totalitet is chiefly encountered in Nordic academic and formal discourse. In English-language scholarship, the concept is usually rendered as totality or wholeness.