totalities
Totalities are terms used across disciplines to denote wholes that integrate diverse parts into a coherent, functioning system. The concept emphasizes that certain properties or dynamics only emerge at the level of the whole and may not be reducible to its components. In philosophy, discussions of totality often engage with how a unified system—such as the Absolute in Hegel or the structure of experience in phenomenology—frames and constrains its parts. In social and political thought, totalities refer to the total social formation—the economy, politics, culture, and institutions as a connected whole—and are used to analyze how these levels condition human action and social change. In Marxist and critical theory, attention to the social totality aims to reveal how different structures reinforce one another.
In logic and mathematics, totality describes a relation or function that is defined for every possible input
Debates surrounding totalities often address the risk of overgeneralization or erasing difference, and scholars may stress