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    Culture & Anarchy Notes

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    Arghya Chakraborty
    The document discusses Matthew Arnold's concept of culture from his work Culture and Anarchy. It outlines Arnold's view that culture is an ongoing process of self-improvement, not a static set of knowledge. Arnold believed society needed a balance of creativity ("Hellenism") and discipline ("Hebraism"). True culture comes from a combination of intellectual pursuit and the moral passion to help others.

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    Culture & Anarchy Notes

    Uploaded by

    Arghya Chakraborty
    1K views2 pages
    The document discusses Matthew Arnold's concept of culture from his work Culture and Anarchy. It outlines Arnold's view that culture is an ongoing process of self-improvement, not a static set of knowledge. Arnold believed society needed a balance of creativity ("Hellenism") and discipline ("Hebraism"). True culture comes from a combination of intellectual pursuit and the moral passion to help others.

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    The document discusses Matthew Arnold's concept of culture from his work Culture and Anarchy. It outlines Arnold's view that culture is an ongoing process of self-improvement, not a static set of knowledge. Arnold believed society needed a balance of creativity ("Hellenism") and discipline ("Hebraism"). True culture comes from a combination of intellectual pursuit and the moral passion to help others.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    1K views2 pages

    Culture & Anarchy Notes

    Uploaded by

    Arghya Chakraborty
    The document discusses Matthew Arnold's concept of culture from his work Culture and Anarchy. It outlines Arnold's view that culture is an ongoing process of self-improvement, not a static set of knowledge. Arnold believed society needed a balance of creativity ("Hellenism") and discipline ("Hebraism"). True culture comes from a combination of intellectual pursuit and the moral passion to help others.

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    of 2

    1. For Arnold, the opposite of culture was doing as one likes, 2.

    Focus on the problem of overcoming a narrow subjectivism and learning to comprehend the social body as a whole. 3. Arnolds culture is idealist; it represents something to be strived for, and this makes it prone to claims of elitism. 4. His concept is sometimes used to equate culture with the mastery of a body of exemplary materials, such as a set of Great Books. In this view, A rnoldian culture is ultimately something available primarily to the educated fortunate few while inaccessible to many. 5. The land-owning aristocracy are Barbarians, referencing their medieval origin as warriors in ironic contrast to their modern indulgence in a life of privileged ease. 6. The commercial and industrial middle class of manufacturers, artisans, shopkeepers, and bankers are Philistines, a term that ever since has described a combination of materialism with a disdain for art and the intellect. 7. Poorly-paid laborers, agricultural tenants, scavengers, and the unemployed are the Populace. 8. He called this class-bound perspective the ordinary self, while its opposite was the best self, a transcendent perspective that recognizes the needs of others and puts the greater good ahead of class interest or personal gain. 9. The governing idea of Hellenism is spontaneity of consciousness ; that of Hebraism, strictness of conscience , he explained, referencing creativity on the one hand and discipline on the other 10. Society needs a strong dose of Hellenism, and so Arnoldian culture favored originality in thought, creativity in art, and experimentation in science, all without regard for practical outcomes. 11. Intellectual free play is cultures central value.

    12. The Puritans great danger, noted Arnold, is that he thinks he already knows the rule, and so knows all he needs, and then remains satisfied with a very crude conception of what this rule really is and what it tells him, thinks he has now knowledge and henceforth needs only to act, and, in this dangerous state of assurance and self-satisfaction, proceeds to give full swing to a number of the instincts of his ordinary self 13. As Arnold claims in Culture and Anarchy , culture is a process, Not a having and a resting, but a growing and a becoming, and so one is never completely free nor successful in acquiring culture but rather always unfinished 14. Today, Arnolds complex theory of culture is often reduced to the sound bite of his famous phrase, the best that is known and thought in the world, as if culture itself were contained in a set of specific books. In fact, that phrase comes from his definition of criticism, not of culture, and it described an ongoing process of evaluation. The best was something yet to be determined, not something already known. Otherwise, there would be no reason for the practice of criticism to exist. Nor would there be a need for the complex combination of intellectual pursuit with the moral and social passion for doing good that ultimately lay at the heart of his theory of culture. 15. Section I - Sweetness and Light 16. Section II - Doing as One Likes 17. Section III - Barbarians, Philistines, Populace 18. Section IV - Hebraism and Hellenism 19. Section V - Porro Unum est Necessarium 20. Section VI - Our Liberal Practitioners

    Arghya Chakraborty

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