levelism

Noun

levelism (uncountable)

1. The political aim of levelling all distinctions of rank in society; egalitarianism.
   • Supposing the charge exhibited against governments, under the national control, to be true; and admitting that they do tend towards levelism; it would then become necessary to compute, which species of levelism, that of dividing property between three orders according to Mr. Adams's system, or that...1814, John Taylor, An Inquiry Into The Principles And Policy Of The Government Of The United States
   • Our greatest danger is from the contagion of levelism; what folly is it that has set the world agog to be all equal to French barbers .1846, Chauncy Goodrich, “Letter from Chauncy Goodrich, February 17,1793”, in Oliver Wolcott, George Gibbs, editor, Memoirs of the Administrations of Washington and John Adams, page 88
2. The use of different levels of abstraction in order to understand something.
   • Reality can be studied at different levels, so forms of 'levelism' have often been advocated in the past. In the 1970s, levelism nicely doevetailed with the computational turn and became a standard approach both in science and philosophy.2013, Luciano Floridi, The Philosophy of Information, page 47
   • Epistemological levelism, based on levels of abstraction, endorses pluralism without falling into relativism or perspectivism, since "the explicit reference to the LoA makes it clear that the model of a system is a function of the available observables, and that it is reasonable to rank different...2017, Massimo Durante, Ethics, Law and the Politics of Information, page 12