Philistinism

In the fields of philosophy and of aesthetics, the term philistinism describes the attitudes, habits, and characteristics of a person who deprecates art and beauty, spirituality and intellect. As a derogatory term philistine describes a person who is narrow-minded and hostile to the life of the mind, whose materialistic worldview and tastes indicate an indifference to cultural and aesthetic values. The contemporary meaning of philistine 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. About the riot, Georg Heinrich Götze, the ecclesiastical superintendent, applied the word Philister in his sermon about the social class hostilities between students and townspeople. Götze addressed the town-vs-gown matter with an admonishing sermon, "The Philistines Be Upon Thee", drawn from the Book of Judges (Chapt. , Samson vs the Philistines), of the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible), adopted into the Christian Old Testament. In German usage, university students applied the term Philister (Philistine) to describe a person who was not trained at university; in the German social context, the term identified the man (Philister) and woman (Philisterin) who was not from the university. In English usage, the term philistine—a person hostile to aesthetic and intellectual discourse—was common British usage by the decade of 1820, and was applied to the bourgeois, merchant middle class of the Victorian Era (1837–1901), whose new wealth rendered some of them hostile to cultural traditions which favored aristocratic power. In Culture and Anarchy: An Essay in Political and Social Criticism (1869), Matthew Arnold said: The denotations and connotations of the terms philistinism and philistine describe people who are hostile to art, culture, and the life of the mind, and, in their stead, favor economic materialism and conspicuous consumption as paramount human activities.