Matthew Arnold and the Importance of Culture

Theme 1: Matthew Arnold

Matthew Arnold was a famous literary critic, poet, and school inspector. His study of popular culture will focus mainly on culture and anarchy. Besides, he inaugurates a tradition, a particular way of seeing popular culture.

Popular culture is a culture that is widely favored or well-liked by many people. What is not high culture. It is seen as mass culture, an impoverished and devaluated form of culture. It is an “authentic” culture which originates from “the people” (folk culture) and finally, it is the practice of everyday.

His book Culture and Anarchy has had quite an influence on discussions about culture value. In the first chapter from his book, we can know what culture is. Firstly, culture can be related to curiosity which is a question of looking at the things in a disinterested way and for the pleasure of seeing them as they really are. But this is only a part of an adequate definition because curiosity has to be linked to a study of perfection. Therefore, culture has its origin in the love of perfection: it's the study of perfection. It moves by the force of the moral and social passion for doing well.

From an unsystematic way, for Arnold culture is a harmonious expansion of all the powers which make the beauty and worth of humanity; it chooses the best of everything and helps to preserve it; helps to judge correctly and see the things as they really are and discover our best self through reading, observing, and thinking. Also, culture is the pursuit of total perfection which is a humanizing of knowledge and emphasizes beauty and intelligence. This pursuit of perfection is an internal condition rather than a development of external things or “animality”.

According to Arnold, the British society of the 1890s needs his version of culture because the 19^th century civilization was increasingly dominated by “external factors” as the obsession with material things, unrestricted competition, the making of large industrial fortunes, and forms of dissent in politics and religion. For him, his ideal civilization, his ideal culture is a way of helping humanity to develop in a more balanced way where the inner of life is given its proper importance. The role of culture is to bring sweetness and light to everyone, not just a few. According to his definition, culture acts as a counterbalance to excessive materialism and utilitarianism of the industrial age. Now looking at the world we live, we see that we're still arguing over these things. Fundamentally, Arnold insisted on the importance of education, which would broaden the minds of all people, by proposing a national system of education.

Arnold divided the classes into Barbarians, Philistines, and the Populace.

The aristocratic classes were described as Barbarians and this group was characterized by things like individualism, physical strength, good looks, and manners. They were courage, a high spirit, and self-confidence. However, they were undeveloped yet.

For the middle classes, he established the term of Philistines. Although he saw this class as characterized by a practical ability for organization and material development, he lamented the Philistines' materialism, obsession with machinery, and general hostility towards the ideals of high culture. He argued that the middle classes, while being important to economic prosperity, had to develop beyond their material obsession and