Philistinism

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Philistinism is a derogatory term used to describe a particular attitude or set of values. A person called a Philistine (in the relevant sense), is said to despise or undervalue art, beauty, intellectual content, and/or spiritual values. Philistines are also said to be materialistic, to favor conventional social values unthinkingly, and to favor forms of art that have a cheap and easy appeal (e.g. kitsch).

Philistinism affords a contrast to Bohemianism, as the character of a smugly conventional bourgeois social group perceived to lack all the desirably soulful 'bohemian' characteristics, especially an artistic temperament and a broad cultural horizon open to the avant-garde. To the chosen few, the 'Philistines' embodied a smug, anti-intellectual threatening majority, in the 'culture wars' of the 19th century.

A Philistine in Old Testament terms was a pagan inhabitant of the southwestern coastal cities of Canaan, such as Gaza. The Philistines were the neighbors and enemies of the Hebrews. The word came from Hebrew pelishtim, the people of 'Pelesheth' ('Philistia'). The word Philister (Luther's translation) was taken up in German student slang, supposedly first in Jena in the late 17th century, as a dismissive term for the townspeople (compare the British university slang, 'townies,') It is said that at a memorial service for a student killed in a town-gown clash, the minister took for his text the words of Delilah to Samson,'The Philistines be upon thee, Samson!'

In a later century, Goethe had several comments on the type. "The Philistine not only ignores all conditions of life which are not his own but also demands that the rest of mankind should fashion its mode of existence after his own", and "What is a philistine? A hollow gut, full of fear and hope that God will have mercy!"

Jonathan Swift applied the term to a gruff bailiff in a lawsuit, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan applied the term to one of his characters, 'that bloodthirsty Philistine, Sir Lucius O'Trigger,' in The Rivals, 1775, but 'Philistine' really came to have its modern English secondary meaning, of a person deficient in the culture of the Liberal Arts beginning in the 1820s.

Matthew Arnold was the champion of Victorian 'high culture' countering the forces of the Philistines. In his Essays in Criticism (1865) he pointed out (in his essay on the German poet Heinrich Heine) that ' 'Philistine' must have originally meant, in the mind of those who invented the nickname, a strong, dogged, unenlightened opponent of the children of the light.' In fact German students applied it to the long-suffering townspeople of university towns. In another context Arnold wrote, 'The people who believe most that our greatness and welfare are proved by our being very rich... are just the very people whom we call the Philistines.' From his example, 'Philistine' passed into the enlightened liberal's armament of cultural scorn.

J. D. Salinger, although he never uses the actual word, seems to define some form of Philistinism when character Seymour Glass writes about his mother-in-law: "A person deprived, for life, of any understanding or taste for the main current of poetry that flows through things, all things."

Australian writer Rhoderick Gates defined the Philistine more cordially than more passionate critics as "ignorance and, or, indifference without polite guidance to broad appreciation" in Intellectuals, Society and Oligharchy, pg. 1, 1999. "But", he said "the exception is the trailer park crowd, who like to demonstrate they are proud of their ignorance."

Philistines can be described and defined from both positive and negative viewpoints

Compare barbarian, boor, churl, vulgarian, yahoo.