Philistine

Philistine (pronounced fil-uh-steen, fil-us-stahyn, fi-lis-tin, or *.-teen)

(1) A person who is lacking in, hostile to or smugly indifferent to cultural values, intellectual pursuits, aesthetic refinement, etc, or is contentedly commonplace in ideas and tastes; a vulgarian or lowbrow.  Also extended to those thought too materialistic, especially if the objects of their desires are big televisions, jet skis, McMansions etc.   

(2) A native or inhabitant ancient Philistia; one of these non-Semitic people.

1350-1400: From Middle English, a descriptor of the Old Testament people of coastal Palestine who made war on the Israelites, from Old French Philistin, from Late Latin Philistīnī (plural), from Late Greek Philistinoi (plural), all ultimately derived from the Hebrew P'lishtim, (people of P'lesheth (Philistia)).  In Akkad, word was Palastu and in Egyptian Palusata.  The meaning "person felt by the writer or speaker to be deficient in liberal culture" dates from 1827, used originally by Scottish polymath Thomas Carlyle (1798-1881) and popularized by him and English poet Matthew Arnold (1822–1888), both borrowing from the German Philister (enemy of God's word (literally "Philistine," inhabitants of a Biblical land, neighbors (and enemies) of Israel)).  In English, philistine had been used in the humorous figurative sense of "an unfeeling enemy" since circa 1600.  The related noun is philistinism.

It was popularized in German student slang as a contemptuous term by the “gownies” for the "townies" and hence, by extension, to any uncultured or uneducated person.  This apparently derived from the use of the biblical text "the Philistines be upon you, Samson" (Judges 16) in a memorial service for a Jena university student who died as the result of a town versus gown squabble in 1693 (sometimes cited as 1689) which had turned more than usually violent, several Germans beaten to death.  The usual convention in English applies: It’s Philistine with a capital P if referring to those of biblical description and philistine with a lower-case p when deriding those whose lives are thought culturally barren.

Writers

Vladimir Nabokov thought finding obscenity in works of art was philistinism and that art should be criticized only if banal or technically inept.  Art could explore any number of obscenities but, however representational, could not be obscene.

Nietzsche felt himself surrounded by philistines, identifying the worst of the breed as those critical of his writings; such behavior he reduced to an almost clinical condition, accusing them of lacking “true unity” and able to understand any form of style only“...in the negative”.  Martin Amis may have harbored a similar notion, although the quote attributed to him as finding philistinism “…in anyone who preferred television to his novels” may be apocryphal.

Fleet Street’s Tory tabloids liked to hire philistines as columnists.  Few displayed any self-awareness in their shark-feeding populism though Bernard Levin (1928-2004), while at the Daily Mail, affected the style of a philistine proud of his ignorance.  The Mail’s readership enjoyed the solidarity.

The Battle between the Philistines and the Israelites (circa 1580) by Jacopo Robusti (1518-1594).