Enciclopedia Cattolica

PLURALISMO

Pluralism

Volume IX · p. 984 · 1952

English translation · Testo originale italiano

PLURALISMO. - In opposizione a monismo (v.), è la dottrina secondo la quale la realtà è costituita di enti molteplici e diversi.
PLURALISMO. - In opposizione a monismo (v.), è la dottrina secondo la quale la realtà è costituita di enti molteplici e diversi.

Machine translation of the 1948–1954 Italian original. The original text is authoritative.

PLURALISM. — In opposition to monism (q.v.), it is the doctrine according to which reality is constituted by multiple and diverse entities.

Aristotelian philosophy may be called pluralistic, as it admits a distinction in nature between the Unmoved Mover and the separate Intelligences on the one hand, and the corporeal world on the other; and even within each of these two spheres, it admits the existence of different entities, specified by substantial form. All Scholastic philosophies are pluralistic; in the modern era, Leibnizian philosophy is pluralistic, for which the monads, the primary substances that underlie reality, are specifically diverse and irreducible to one another. Pluralistic are all those contemporary philosophies that oppose the reduction of reality to a single type: to matter alone or to spirit alone; e.g., the philosophy of H. Lotze (*Metaphysik*, Leipzig 1841), of W. James (*A Pluralistic Universe*, New York – London 1909).

BIBL.: W. James, *Some Problems of Philosophy...*, New York 1911 (II. trans. by M. Malatesta, *Introduzione alla filosofia*, Milan 1945, pp. 85–108); id., *The Realm of Ends or Pluralism and Theism*, 2nd ed., Cambridge 1912; B. Bourdon, *La doctrine pluraliste*, in *Rev. philos.*, 1916, pp. 409–32; J. Wahl, *Les philosophies pluralistes d'Angleterre et d'Amérique*, Paris 1920.

Sofia Vanni Rovighi