Definition of "monism"

monism

noun
countable and uncountable, plural monisms
1. (philosophy, religion) The doctrine of the oneness and unity of reality, despite the appearance of diversity in the world.
2. (historical, politics) The doctrine that there is a single source of political authority, especially that the church is subordinate to the state or vice versa.
  Quotations
  The same conflict between the monism of temporal theorists and the dualism of ecclesiastical thinkers—the same opposition of organic to symbiotic union—occurred in the ninth century.
  1964, Karl F. Morrison, Two Kingdoms: Ecclesiology in Carolingian Political Thought, Princeton University Press, page 4