Luigi Sturzo’s Sociological Synthetism

Abstract

The article presents the conception worked out by Luigi Sturzo, the Italian priest, community worker, politician and sociologist. His theory, having both anti-collectivist and anti-nominalistic features, is defined as sociological synthetism. Sturzo’s synthetism, however, should not be mistaken for eclecticism: man and society are not two separate realities doomed to mutual coexistence, but it is one reality manifesting itself in two different ways.  Hence a sociologist has to be aware that although there is the necessity to distinguish between individual and social life, which is often repeated in his studies, in his research discipline there is really no difference between what is individual and social, between what is objective and subjective. Sociological synthetism undermines the raison d’ệtre of many widely-held, but according to Sturzo groundless divisions into individual and social: those of morality, sins, religiousness, faith, etc. On the other hand Sturzo stresses that “there is one morality, at the same time individual and social, personal and collective, just like a man is individual and social at the same time”.