The paper aims to clarify, first, Adorno's critique of the association between negativity and totality in Hegel, to then show that, despite this criticism, Adorno himself does not dispense with the concept of totality with an explanatory function. Only on a micrological level Adorno's critique seems justified, in that the concept of totality is criticized as positivation of contemporary society. Thus, his work on the negative dialectic exercises two distinct uses of the concepts of negativity and totality, which can be combined by means of his conception of totality as a socially necessary illusion.
dialectics; determinate negation; totality; socially necessary illusion; instrumental reason