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#117576 12/13/03 02:01 AM
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wwh Offline OP
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"Suddenly No. 9 hurled a book to the floor between his chair and the window, and, looking, I saw that it was The Rose-Lady and Trevelyan, one of the best-selling novels of the present day. And then the critic or Philistine, whichever he was, veered his chair toward the window, and I knew him at once for John A. Pescud, of Pittsburgh, travelling salesman for a plate-glass company--an old acquaintance whom I had not seen in two years."

Particularly in Germany prior to WWI, an anti-illectual,
often anti-Semitic. Heine used it frequently.


#117577 12/27/03 11:43 AM
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Philistines, so used (anti-intellectual), were against intellectuals as a class or simply against any kind of academic achievement?


#117578 12/27/03 07:02 PM
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In the common use of the word here (the UK, particularly in the writings from the early part of the century), Philistines weren't necessary opposed to intellectuals: a Philistine was anti-intellectual in the sense of having a coarseness or insensitivity to the more refined aspects of culture - art and so on. So the word was frequently used synonymously with boor.



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