Who were the Philistines in Matthew Arnold’s classification of English society?

In his seminal work Culture and Anarchy (1869), Matthew Arnold classified the English middle class as the "Philistines".1

Arnold characterized this group as the stronghold of religious nonconformity, possessing significant energy and morality but lacking what he termed "sweetness and light"—a metaphor for the intellectual and aesthetic refinement he advocated. He viewed the Philistines as the most influential segment of Victorian society, arguing that their collective strength and crudeness directly mirrored the state of the nation. Consequently, Arnold believed that the key to societal improvement lay in the effort to "educate and humanize" the Philistines, rather than relying on any single class to represent the nation's "best self".23

His use of the term popularized the "anti-intellectual" sense of philistine, describing a person who is materialistic and disdainful of artistic or intellectual values.4