Philistinism
Philistinism is a derogatory term used to describe a particular attitude or set of values perceived as despising or undervaluing art, beauty, spirituality, or intellectualism. A person with this attitude is referred to as a Philistine and may also be considered materialistic, favoring conventional social values unthinkingly and forms of art that have a cheap and easy appeal (e.g. kitsch).
Usage
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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!"
Nietzsche considered a philistine to be a person who could only define style in the negative, lacking a true unity of their own.
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.
Vladimir Nabokov associated with philistinism the prudish attitude of accusing works of art to be obscene,[1] and described a philistine as a "full-grown person ... whose essential nature is anti-artistic," and whose mentality is formed of the stock ideas and conventional ideas of his group and time",[2] adding that "generally speaking, philistinism presupposes a certain advanced state of civilization where throughout the ages certain traditions have accumulated in a heap and have started to stink".[2]
Historical Philistines
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The Philistines were an advanced culture relative to their contemporary Canaanite neighbours. Modern archaeology in Israel has shown that Philistine urban structure, commercial complexity and technology (pottery/iron) were all more advanced than that of other contemporary Canaanites. Most telling of all comes from 1 Samuel where the Jews (still a Bronze Age society) describe the resentment of trading-dependence with the Philistines for obtaining and re-sharpening of iron agricultural tools. This command of iron (and unwillingness to trade iron weaponry) allowed the far smaller Philistine culture to survive the perpetual warfare with their Hebrew neighbors. Their culture could not withstand the Assyrian and later Babylonian expansions into Canaan, however, after which they disappeared as a cohesive cultural group.
See also
References
- ^ Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, lecture on Madame Bovary
- ^ a b Nabokov, Lectures on Russian Literature, essay Philistines and Philistinism