Philistinism
Etymology
From "Philistine," the biblical people who warred with the Israelites; the cultural sense arose in German student slang, where "Philister" meant a non-student townsman, and was carried into English by Matthew Arnold in "Culture and Anarchy" (1869) to describe the culture-blind middle class.
noun · /FIL-i-stee-niz-um/
Smug indifference or hostility to art, ideas, and refinement.
What it names
The proud dismissal of culture — treating the life of the mind as pretension or waste.
Example
Cutting the music program was defended with a philistinism that framed beauty as a luxury.
Related idea
Snobbery over-values cultural status and polices it; philistinism dismisses cultural value altogether. One worships the ladder of taste; the other denies the ladder exists.
See also