Concept
High culture
Overview
In a society, high culture encompasses cultural objects of aesthetic value that a society collectively highly esteems. It can include works of art (such as literature and music), history, and philosophy that a society considers respectable representatives of its culture.
In popular usage, the term high culture identifies the culture either of the upper class (an aristocracy) or of a status class (the intelligentsia); "high culture" also identifies a society's common repository of broad-range knowledge and tradition (folk culture) that transcends its social-class system. Sociologically, the term is contrasted with "low culture", which comprises the forms of popular culture characteristic of the less-educated social classes, such as the barbarians, the philistines, and hoi polloi (the masses), though the upper classes very often also enjoy low culture.
Matthew Arnold introduced the term "high culture" in his 1869 book Culture and Anarchy. Its preface defines "culture" as "the disinterested endeavour after man's perfection" pursued, obtained, and achieved by effort to "know the best that has been said and thought in the world". Such a definition also includes philosophy. Moreover, the philosophy of aesthetics proposed in high culture is a force for moral and political good. Critically, the term "high culture" is contrasted with the "low culture" terms "popular culture" and "mass culture".
In Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948), T. S. Eliot writes that high culture and popular culture are necessary and complementary parts of a society's culture. In The Uses of Literacy (1957), Richard Hoggart presents the sociologic experience of working-class people in acquiring at university the cultural literacy that facilitates upward social mobility. In the U.S., Harold Bloom and F. R. Leavis pursued the definition of high culture by way of the Western canon of literature. Media theorist Steven Johnson writes that, unlike popular culture, "the classics—and soon to be classics—are in their own right descriptions and explanations of the cultural systems that produced them" and that "a crucial way in which mass culture differs from high art" is that individual works of mass culture are less interesting than the broader cultural trends that produced them.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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It would be absolutely unworthy of a profound thinker to see any objection in mediocrity _per se._ For in itself it is the first essential condition under which exceptions are possible; a high culture is determined by it. When the exceptional man treats the mediocre with more tender care than he does himself or his equals, this is not mere courtesy of heart on his part—but simply his _duty._ ...
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Twilight of the Idols
States what High culture is; opens on High culture.
In every civilized society, in every society where the distinction of ranks has once been completely established, there have been always two different schemes or systems of morality current at the same time; of which the one may be called the strict or austere; the other the liberal, or, if you will, the loose system. The former is generally admired and revered by the common people; the latter is commonly more…
Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
States what High culture is.
As a consequence, our actual system is an inconsistent mixture. Certain studies and methods are retained on the supposition that they have the sanction of peculiar liberality, the chief content of the term liberal being uselessness for practical ends. This aspect is chiefly visible in what is termed the higher education--that of the college and of preparation for it.
John Dewey, Democracy and Education
States what High culture is.
Philosophers who discussed High culture
Related ideas
- Greco-Roman world
- History
- Pierre Bourdieu
- Matthew Arnold
- Greek language
- Philosophy
- Elitism
- James Joyce
- Latin
- Leon Trotsky
- Painting
- Sociology
- Literature
- Culture
- Ernest Renan
- East Asia
- Drama
- Michelangelo
- Western culture
- Aesthetics
- Film
- Nationalism
- Ernest Gellner
- Opera
Place in the tradition
Part of Conservatism.