Philistinism


In the fields of philosophy and aesthetics, the derogatory term philistinism describes the "manners, habits and character" of a person whose anti-intellectual social attitude undervalues and despises art and beauty, spirituality and intellect. A philistine person is of smugly narrow mind, and of conventional morality whose materialistic views and tastes indicate a lack of and an indifference to cultural and æsthetic values.
Since the 19th century, the contemporary denotation of philistinism, as the behaviour of "ignorant, ill-behaved persons lacking in culture or artistic appreciation, and only concerned with materialistic values" derives from Matthew Arnold's adaptation to English of the German word Philister – as applied by university students in their antagonistic relations with the townspeople of Jena, Germany, where a row resulted in several deaths, in 1689. The German word derived from a sermon by :de:Georg Heinrich Götze|Georg Heinrich Götze, the ecclesiastical superintendent who addressed the hostilities between students and townspeople.
In the aftermath, the cleric Götze addressed the town-vs-gown matter with an admonishing sermon "The Philistines Be Upon Thee", drawn from the Book of Judges, from the Christian Old Testament. In Word Research and Word History, the philologist Friedrich Kluge said that the word philistine originally had a positive meaning that identified a tall and strong man, such as Goliath; later the meaning changed to identify the "guards of the city".

History

In German usage, university students applied the term Philister to describe a person who was not trained at university; in the German social context, the term identified the man and the woman who was not of the university social set.
In English usage, as a descriptor of anti-intellectualism, the term philistine—a person deficient in the culture of the liberal arts—was common British usage by the decade of 1820, which described the bourgeois, merchant middle class of the Victorian Era, whose wealth rendered them indifferent to culture. In Culture and Anarchy: An Essay in Political and Social Criticism, Matthew Arnold said:

Usages

The denotations and connotations of the terms philistinism and philistine have evolved to consistently describe the uncouth person who is hostile to art, culture, and the life of the mind, who, in their stead, prefers the life of economic materialism and conspicuous consumption as paramount human activities.
;17th century
Whilst involved in a lawsuit, the writer and poet Jonathan Swift, in the slang of his time, described a gruff bailiff as a philistine, someone who is considered a merciless enemy.
;18th century
The polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe described the philistine personality, by asking:
Goethe further described such men and women, by noting that:
In the comedy of manners play, The Rivals, Richard Brinsley Sheridan identifies a violent aristocrat as 'that bloodthirsty Philistine, Sir Lucius O'Trigger'.
;19th century
In The Sickness Unto Death, the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard criticises the spiritlessness of the philistine-bourgeois mentality of triviality and the self-deception of despair.
The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche identified the philistine as a person who, for a lack of true unity, could only define style in the negative.
;20th century