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

Aristotelian philosophy can be called pluralistic, since it admits a distinction of nature between the Prime Mover and the separate Intelligences on the one hand and the corporeal world on the other, and, even within each of these two worlds, admits the existence of diverse entities, specified by substantial form. All Scholastic philosophies are pluralistic; in the modern era, pluralistic is the Leibnizian philosophy, for which the monads, the primary substances that stand at the foundation of 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: for example, the philosophy of H. Lotze (Metaphysik, Leipzig 1841), of W. James (A pluralistic universe, New York - London 1909).

Bibliography4 works

BIBL.: W. James, Some problems on philosophy..., New York 1911 (Italian 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

@incollection{ec9_pluralismo, author = {Vanni, Rovighi Sofia}, title = {Pluralismo}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {IX}, pages = {1635}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1952}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/pluralismo} }

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