Philistinism

In the fields of philosophy and æsthetics, the derogatory term philistinism describes the social attitude of anti-intellectualism that undervalues and despises art, beauty, spirituality, and intellect; "the manners, habits, and character, or mode of thinking of a philistine". A philistine person is a man or woman 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.

According to Friedrich Kluge, the word initially used to have a positive meaning, referring to a strong and tall person - that is, of Goliath's build, but later changed the meaning to refer to city guards. 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, in 1689, a row resulted in several deaths. In the aftermath, the university cleric addressed the town-vs-gown matter with an admonishing sermon 'The Philistines be upon thee', drawn from the Book of Judges (Chapter 16, 'Samson vs the Philistines'), of the Tanakh and of 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 the woman (Philisterin) 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 (1837–1901), whose wealth rendered them indifferent to culture. In Culture and Anarchy: An Essay in Political and Social Criticism (1869), Matthew Arnold said:

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