Pluralism (PLURALISMO) - Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. IX, p. 984

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

PLURALISM. - monism (v.), it is the doctrine according to which reality is constituted by multiple and diverse beings.

Aristotelian philosophy may be called pluralistic, since it admits a distinction in 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, it admits the existence of different beings, specified by substantial form. All Scholastic philosophies are pluralistic; in the modern age, Leibnizian philosophy is pluralistic, since for it the monads, the primary substances underlying reality, are specifically different 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, Lipsia 1841), and of W. James (A pluralistic universe, Nuova York - Londra 1909).

BIBL.: W. James, Some problems on philosophy..., Nuova York 1911 (Italian trans. by M. Malatesta, Introduzione alla filosofia, Milano 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, Parigi 1920.

Sofia Vanni Rovighi