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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). Image File history File links Broom_icon. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with pejoration. ... This article is about the philosophical concept of Art. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... An intellectual is one who tries to use his or her intellect to work, study, reflect, speculate on, or ask and answer questions with regard to a variety of different ideas. ... This article addresses materialism in the economic sense of the word. ... Kitsch is a term of German origin that has been used to categorize art that is considered an inferior copy of an existing style. ...

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. The term bohemian was first used in the nineteenth century to describe the non-traditional lifestyles of marginalized and impoverished artists, writers, musicians, and actors in major European cities. ... Bourgeois at the end of the thirteenth century. ... A work similar to Marcel Duchamps Fountain Avant garde (written avant-garde) is a French phrase, one of many French phrases used by English speakers. ... Anti-intellectualism is a term that in one sense describes a hostility towards, or mistrust of, intellectuals and intellectual pursuits. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ...

Origin and Use of the Word Philistine

The Philistines were Canaanite neighbors/enemies of the Hebrews living along the southwestern coastline of present-day Gaza. 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. 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!' Map showing the location of Philistine land and cities of Gaza, Ashdod, and Ashkelon Map of the southern Levant, c. ... Canaanite can describe anything pertaining to Canaan: in particular, its languages and inhabitants. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Not to be confused with the Spanish name Garza or the Egyptian town of Giza. ... Martin Luther (November 10, 1483 – February 18, 1546) was a German monk,[1] priest, professor, theologian, and church reformer. ... , For other uses, see Jena (disambiguation). ...

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!" Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (pronounced [gø tə]) (August 28, 1749–March 22, 1832) was a German writer, politician, humanist, scientist, and philosopher. ...

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. Jonathan Swift Jonathan Swift (November 30, 1667 – October 19, 1745) was an Irish cleric, satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for Whigs then for Tories), and poet, famous for works like Gullivers Travels, A Modest Proposal, A Journal to Stella, The Drapiers Letters, The Battle of the Books, and... Richard Brinsley Sheridan Richard Brinsley Sheridan (October 30, 1751 – July 7, 1816) was an Irish playwright and Whig statesman. ... The Rivals, a play by Richard Brinsley Sheridan, is a comedy of manners in five acts. ... In the history of education, the seven liberal arts comprise two groups of studies, the trivium and the quadrivium. ...

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. Matthew Arnold Caricature from Punch, 1881: Admit that Homer sometimes nods, That poets do write trash, Our Bard has written Balder Dead, And also Balder-dash Family tree Matthew Arnold (24 December 1822 – 15 April 1888) was an English poet and cultural critic, who worked as an inspector of schools. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Christian Johann Heinrich Heine (born Chaim Harry Heine, December 13, 1797 – February 17, 1856) was a journalist, an essayist, and one of the most significant German romantic poets. ...

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." Jerome David Salinger (born January 1, 1919) is an American author best known for his 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye, as well as his reclusive nature; he has not published any new work since 1965 and has not granted a formal interview since 1980. ...

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." A writer is anyone who creates a written work, although the word more usually designates those who write creatively or professionally, or those who have written in many different forms. ... For the Beth Orton album, see Trailer Park (album). ...

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

Compare barbarian, boor, churl, vulgarian, yahoo. Look up Barbarian in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Look up boor in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... A churl, in its earliest Anglo-Saxon meaning, was simply a man, but the word soon came to mean a non-servile peasant, still spelt ceorle, and denoting the lowest rank of freemen. ...

Irony of Derogatory Philistine as Contrasted with Historical Evidence

The Philistines were an advanced culture relative to their contemporary Canaanite neighbors - notably the Jews (kingdom of Judah), with whom they bordered. The Philistines were not indigenous to the region (possibly proto-Greek), having (according to general, though not fully substantiated theory) been part of a larger group who made war on Egypt and lost - eventually settling just out of Egypt's sphere of influence. Modern archeology 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 society) describe the resentment of trading-dependence with the Philistines for obtaining & 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 wars with their Jewish neighbors. Their boutique culture could not withstand the Assyrian and later Babylonian expansions into Canaan, however - after which they disappeared as a cohesive cultural group. Map showing the location of Philistine land and cities of Gaza, Ashdod, and Ashkelon Map of the southern Levant, c. ... Kingdom of Judah (Hebrew מַלְכוּת יְהוּדָה, Standard Hebrew Malḫut Yəhuda, Tiberian Hebrew Malḵûṯ Yəhûḏāh) in the times of the Hebrew Bible, was the nation formed from the territories of the tribes of Judah, Simeon, and Benjamin after the Kingdom of Israel was divided, and was named after Judah... Assyrian may refer to: List of Assyrian settlements Anything from Assyria, an ancient empire in Mesopotamia Anything from Assyria (Roman province), a province of the Roman Empire Assyrian people, a present-day Middle Eastern ethnic group Several Christian denominations: Assyrian Church of the East Assyrian Church of the Easts... Babylonia was an ancient state in Iraq), combining the territories of Sumer and Akkad. ...

See also

• Snob
• Boeotian
• Poshlost'
• Bigotry
• Dumbing down

A snob, guilty of snobbery, is a person that adopts the world-view that other people are inherently inferior for any one of a variety of reasons including supposed intellect, wealth, education, ancestry, etc. ... Boeotia or Beotia (//, (Greek Βοιωτια; see also list of traditional Greek place names) was the central area of ancient Greece. ... Poshlost is a Russian word (пошлость) defined by the critic Vladimir Alexandrov as a kind of petty evil or self-satisfied vulgarity. The first examinations of poshlost in literature are in the work of Nikolai Gogol. Gogol wrote, referring to Pushkin, He used to say of me that no other writer... A bigot is a prejudiced person who is intolerant of opinions, lifestyles, or identities differing from his or her own. ... Dumbing down is a usually derogatory term which refers to the simplifying of a subject, often education, news and TV amongst others. ...

External links

• Are you a Philistine?