From Hip Hop to Auto plant

[Paul Murphy]

At 6:28 PM 7/27/97, Giles Peaker wrote:

>'The whole is false' is too easy to turn into an excuse for not even
>having totality as a possibility. Indeed, wasn't Adorno's point that the
>'false' whole was real (if not seamless)? Negation without the concept of
>totality is no negation - even if the promise can only be in the negation.

Indeed. (Brief pedantic point: the line in the German original doesn't say
that the whole is 'falsch', but merely 'unwahr', untrue). Adorno glosses
and expands this maxim from _Minima Moralia_ in a very illuminating passage
from _Hegel: Three Studies_: "The ray of light that reveals the whole to be
untrue in all its moments is none other than utopia, the utopia of the
whole truth, which is still to be realized" (p.88, English translation).

Regards,
Paul N. Murphy
Graduate Student
Department of Philosophy
University of Toronto