Dear Ignazio,

You should read Bourdieu's "Distinction" and also Umberto Eco "apocaliptics and integrated.

You should also bear in mind that the distinction itself has been blurred in the last twenty years (i.e Tarantino Films, Hip-Hop, street art). It is no longer as clear as in the sixties.

Hope it helps.

Yours,

Luis

Thanks Luis! I read 'Apocalittici e integrati' and I'm familiar with Bourdieu's work. However, what they both fail to give is a precise definition of highbrow/lowbrow: in both of them, it is more or less implied that highbrow is part of the 'canon' or the culture of the dominating class. What I am looking for is something like : "Highbrow has the following features: X,Y,Z". Any clue?

Dear Ignazio Ziano,

 As a major distinction In diglossic communities, the issue of prestige is important. I believe you are right to ask for specific clues for your research. Then, features like distance from the standard variety, application in official contexts, educational status, its role in the existing media and its use by particular social groups can make a variety to be considered as either a high brow or a  low brow .

Best regards,

R. Biria

Hi Ignazio

What you are asking for is a ‘word study’. As with all else in philosophy, this requires context and perspective. Context must include the generally accepted meaning as derived from a dictionary. It must also include a close examination of bio-social parameters (biological dispositions with regard to social triggers that together influence how we act and react in the cultural environment). These elements of context are handled with a careful attention to objectivity.

Perspective places contextual matter in subjective categories. Here we are concerned with ‘weltanschauung’ and ideology. The first is a general outlook, the second the vantage activated within a circumstance or situation and which is thus more specific than general even where the subject is expansive (as in political ideologies, for example). Examination will want to include influences of the one upon the other.

In sum, we want to know how people generally conceive of these words ‘high-brow’ and ‘lowbrow’, and we then want to see what factors lead them to this acceptation. These will be (from our view) empirical evidence of bio-social facts that will help inform our own definition. These commonly observed criteria are already available to us in any good English language thesaurus (we will use the Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus).

Our perspective will be divined from the thesaurus entries, to which we will apply bio-social parameters. Since we will be comparing meanings of related ideas from the thesaurus, we also consider the necessary influence of our two words on one another (highbrow’ is not quite the same as when compared with ‘low-brow’ since the latter has tended to carry pejorative connotations).

My edition of Webster’s New Riverside Dictionary has this entry for ‘high-brow’: “One who has or affects superior learning or culture.” And for ‘low-brow’: “One having uncultivated tastes.” The dictionary tells us that each of these definitions is ‘informal’, suggesting that variation is likely within the compass of the given definition and that the accepted usage is uncommonly influenced by variant impressions and preconceptions. The dictionary has done its best to collapse them into a valid generality, which should tell us something right off the top, namely, that we will be heavily reliant upon the thesaurus and on our bio-social evaluation.

Before proceeding to the thesaurus entries let me introduce the approach we will take on the subjective elements (perspective). An understanding of bio-social factors in individual and group behavior offers us a good rule of thumb to rely on when our context is variable: Whether general or specific, we look to the nature and quality of introspection as determined from adequate behavioral flags. By ‘introspection’ we mean any of three things: the neutral/objective meaning implies the attempt to understand why we think and feel as we do (with which the dictionary agrees). The ‘other-oriented’ meaning implies a searching of justification and responsibility with the object of treating others with decency and dignity. The third variant, the ‘self-oriented’ meaning, implies a whole cavalcade of notions from thinking and justifying entitlement to degrees of scheming. Broadly, what they all share is the notion that the self needs to feel satisfied and needs it at a level requiring and justifying obtaining it at the expense of others.

We should always understand the role of ‘compartmentalization’, a biological capacity to conveniently forget what interferes with a current objective. What is ignored and ‘forgotten’ is said to have dropped from the shelf of conscious awareness into a lower ‘compartment’ where it can be called back again when desired (at which point something else will be shoved off the edge for presenting an interference). The psychoanalytic concept of denial is nothing other than just this process.

Douglas Brinkley, in his Liberalism and its Discontents, has a chapter (Icons of the American Establishment) in which he deals with several of what we will discover are variations on the ‘highbrow’ theme. I offer a lengthy quote presuming Mr. Brinkley and publishers will respect the context. At the very least it will inform simplistic souls of the unwisdom of cobbling together a definition from the hip or armchair.

“Most definitions of the establishment rest on two interlocking sets of characteristics: one social and one ideological. Socially, the establishment was characterized by the privilege and self-conscious elitism of its members…. The ideological affinity…was in many ways a reflection of these social characteristics. Establishment figures were almost always successful…who had inherited, or acquired, a sense of entitlement mixed with civic responsibility that in another time or place might be called noblesse oblige… …people schooled in the ethic of public service that permeated the elite educational institutions and the social and familiar circles…it was therefore the duty of such people to serve the nation when called.”

This is a panoramic view of noble aspirations of other-orientation interlarded with self-consciously aware, self-oriented superiority over common opinion and oftentimes over their dignity (i.e., a ‘cult of dignity’ where their dignity is better than that of outsiders to the club). Clearly there is compartmentalization a plenty, which the next passage will help us better to comprehend.

The establishment political weltanschauung “rested on the assumption of America’s right and obligation to play a leading role in world affairs and on an almost unquestioned faith in the moral and practical wisdom of the nation’s values and its capitalist institutions. They displayed a limited ability to understand social of political systems markedly different from their own. Establishment figures were skilled at doing business with ‘gentlemen’…but often maladroit in dealing with less polished leaders. They prized stability and identified all but the most modest challenges to the status quo as ‘radicalism’, and hence a danger.”

To generalize: whatever we shall end up calling ‘highbrow’, it must surely designate either the manifesting or its disposition, of attitudes that play one part of the character off against the other (compartmentalizing). The blindness to what one does not like or of which one is afraid or which would bring unwanted identifications were it not repressed, is caused by only so many possible things in bio-social terms. If we agree in the end that the ‘highbrow’ manifests tendencies easily characterized as ‘blindness’ of the legitimate needs or aspirations of the ‘out’ group, we are left with this: the awareness of denying what custom and law protect to/for the ‘out’ group in favor of one’s own desire to be powerful and influential and carry the trappings of wealth and status, must in one who also desires to be thought decent and of sound moral compass, must justify by good deeds the knowing deeds of omission necessary to preserve the ill-gotten status.

In looking now to the thesaurus, we approach those words mindful of some questions: 1) to what extent do innocent marks of ‘highbrow’ such as learning, presuppose disposition either to affectation or to blindness to acts that nobility must not overlook by reason of self-interest; 2) can a person have power, status and wealth and yet remain above temptations of power, and if not, does the ‘highbrow’ label still obtain? Or, is the ‘highbrow’ label to presume not merely good acts such as generate the label, but as well a stable and consistent good-ness throughout all, and to all alike with only such faults as are forgiven any of us?

High-born: This of course goes to aristocratic notions, or ‘patrician’ breeding, blue-blooded, et. We remember in this connection that the origin of ‘high-brow’ is with this idea, since in this meaning the word designated condescension, looking down at others with the expression of the raised (high) brow. Of course, usage does change and today’s dictionaries rely far less on this pejorative rendering. But we must still ask how far we can dismiss these older notions if we nonetheless still see many equivalent manifestations of other behavioral characteristics having nothing to do with eyebrows but carrying the same thought.

High-class: upper-class, first-rate, excellent, select, elite, premier, etc. This listing mixes objective with subjective terms: elitist and premier carry heavy overtones of expected condescension and/or blindness to others. The rest suggest a desire or demand for top quality and/or performance such as stewardship requires in any office (and where it categorically forbids the slightest condescension and takes blindness as a reason for dismissal).

High-flown: grand extravagant, elaborate, flowery, lofty, ornate, overblown, overdone, overwrought, grandiloquent, magniloquent, grandiose, orotund, inflated, affected, pretentious, etc. While these are all reasonably objective, they are about 50-50 normative or pejorative. These are in bio-social terms ‘traits’ that when manifesting together or severely enough on their own to produce what a bystander would take for a ‘red flag’ behavior clearly marking the person as deficient in adequate sensibility, come to the psychiatrist as probable symptoms of bipolar illness (or see this author’s Bipolar Assessment tool here at RG).

High-handed: imperious, arbitrary, peremptory, arrogant, haughty, domineering, supercilious, pushy, overbearing, etc. These are the markings of a weltanschauung-originating blindness (as also for any ideology taken to extremes). Yet these are also card-carrying bipolar traits. And note the ‘supercilious’, the etymology of which is our very own ‘high-brow’ a word which thus exemplifies the condescension that the newer definitions elide somewhat.

High-impact: impressive, bold, compelling, effective, punchy, forceful, intensive, energetic, dynamic, etc. We associate ‘high-brow’ folks to exemplify these traits if only as reflecting the caliber of culture or position or status held. After all, what comes of heritage, deep principle and commitment is expected to give rise to these and similar traits. Most of these are also bipolar traits when severe or when dominating the personality.

High-maintenance: demanding, challenging, exacting, difficult, hard to please, needy. Whether from personal acquaintance or movies or press reports, notables we would presume ‘high-brow’ are seen manifesting these traits far more than the general population. Again, these are bipolar traits. You will not get to know a bipolar personally without over time seeing these in high relief. This is particularly true of the genius types (Einstein was a bugbear, for example).

High-minded: principled, honorable, moral, upright, upstanding, right-minded, noble, good, honest, decent ethical, righteous, virtuous, worthy, idealistic. We like to suppose that many of these would mark the ‘high-brow’ but as with the crew described by Brinkley, that isn’t real likely. But we do know that these do exist comparatively unalloyed with the downside problems. The question is whether this relatively small group would selectively take our label when we are accustomed to it applying to a wide swath of people. After all, those who are cultures or well-read are not necessarily preeminent or even eminent, yet they satisfy the usual definition. Would we deny to them the label ‘high-brow’ only because we reserve it to the purest echelon? But is otherwise, we confess to relying heavily on the downside for our definition. This is the real dilemma we face in arriving at a satisfactory definition.

High-profile: prominent, well-known, famous, renowned, celebrated, legendary, notable, noteworthy, distinguished, eminent, visible, conspicuous, notorious, infamous. Those who we consider ‘high-brow’ tend to come to the acme of culture or knowledge as a sidelight to affairs that very typically bring them into prominence. A man becomes highly successful in business and takes up as a socialite at the country club, for example. Some who gain prominence in one field end up becoming learned in another. Altogether, it is difficult to know whether we can define ‘high-brow’ as what came naturally or what was acquired.

Theodore Roosevelt was the first and last American President to ballyhoo the idea of ‘stewardship’. He felt he had an obligation to steward America, but he did this unmindful of the feelings or aspirations ofn anyone else in the world. He had the colonizing spirit of the day and time and thought in many ways like any other colonizing country of that era. Whatever they considered stewardship had to be just and right. If the natives disagreed they were overruled since it was all for their own good, you understand (blindness and compartmentalizing). And yet Roosevelt was also the only man of his era strong enough to thwart the huge trusts. No one else could have pretended to scratch what he fractured. He was overbearing, over-energetic, did reckless things to endear himself with the crowds.

Was he a ‘high-brow’ for attaining his position, or for his noble deeds? Or the blindness of his ignoble deeds? Not so much by today’s dictionary definition. What Roosevelt did do was attain a Nobel Prize in literature for his twenty-something books. Now that is ‘high-brow’ by any definition. He manifested most all of the traits listed in the thesaurus, and he is today universally recognized as having been a full-blown bipolar.

The point of this long protracted exercise is to stress the fact and relevance of what most do not want to discuss, using a methodology most are too lazy or indulgent to recognize as necessary. We don’t like talking about what we wish to avoid identifying with, an indication that, as said above, compartmentalization is a very human phenomenon. As a philosopher, while I am to appreciate why that is, I nonetheless am required to deny your presumptions that ‘bio-social’ evidence is irrelevant for whatever reason.

The fact of our existence is this, like it or not (you can lump it for all I care): when we do what brings us to broad attention, we should understand that the vast majority arrive on behalf of and consequent to, bipolar traits that manifest individually and not in symptomatic form (but in many of the most successful, that changes, and the rate of bipolar disorder fairly skyrockets relative to the general population.

And with best of those traits, those giving rise to discoveries, inventions, great literature and statesmanship, come the disposition for the negative traits, which are just as common amongst the non-symptomatic as anywhere else. Meaning, that what we have commonly accepted as ‘high-brow’, by whatever combination of meanings, we have to presume the extreme likelihood of dismissive blindness. It need not, indeed should not, disqualify from inclusion as ‘high-brow’. At issue is whether we should actually stipulate these negative traits as an essential component of a normative definition.

Whether we deal with yesterday or today, a pairing we cannot dismiss is that of ‘elite’-‘high-brow’. They share much in common: both imply a status that presumes self-aware superiority; both imply that the self-consciousness that comes of being aware that status does not justify blindness toward the ‘out’ group rarely detracts from the means of attaining and preserving the perquisites of status and influence. Both carry flavors of accomplishment beyond the average or norm, as well as a quality in the manner or degree of achievement, whether in learning, culture or some combination. Both terms easily associate with breeding, with birth and inherent entitlement, as well as acquired entitlement. Both are natural or affected.

The difference between these two is clearly revealed in the etymology of the words. Elitism stresses a state in which status and/or breeding qualify one for special preferment as well as some form of noblesse oblige; ‘high-brow’ by contrast is less a state and more a condition associated with a similar or identical state, namely, the condition of the raised brow as indicating condescension, something elitism can include but which does not pretend to ‘characterize’ it, regardless the potential for its appearance. In other words, relative to ‘elitism’, the ‘high-brow’ indicates a way of showing status by the fact and degree of blindness and compartmentalization that such a mannerism intends to convey.

Given how much these words share, we must wonder whether one of them were not entirely superfluous were it not for the contrast we have just elaborated. If not all elites are high-brows, there is going to be a tendency to manifest it from time to time; all high-brows, however, are in fact elites and where they are not, affect to be, which to me is what the dictionary definition is probably indicating.

Finally, in comparing high-brow with low-brow and bearing in mind the dictionary definition, it is clear that the comparison suggests that the pejorative meaning attributed to the low-brow comes from the condescension of the high-brow, that the latter is showing its true colors in wearing off on the low-brow congener. All told, everything we have seen, from bio-social evidence to dictionary and thesaurus usages, to side-by-side comparisons of leading terms, shows that, whether we like to think so or not, ‘high-brow’ remains a term as much of disparagement as of fact, that no additional argument can erase.

I therefore define ‘high-brow’ as follows:

“1. A trait or traits common to elitists or those affecting such, specifically, those giving rise to a presumption of condescension toward ‘out’-groups amounting to supercilious display or bearing intended to convey disregard bordering on contempt. 2. A person of learning, culture, rectitude or spirit feeling entitled to more than ordinary regard, considering those without such accomplishments of sufficiently lower status as to merit open condescension when, for example, their own status is questioned. ”

This definition agrees with a broad rendering. For example, C. S. Lewis once considered non-smokers as something on the order of supercilious; it seems he could with as much justice have used ‘high-brow’. Here it is a spiritual achievement (of not giving in to the habit to begin with, or having kicked the habit), and so is included in the definition, along with ‘righteous’, which in some instance could easily have satisfied Lewis’ meaning. If when looking at the homeless we are brought to see ourselves as somehow entitled to a lot if the homeless are entitled to a bread crumb, here a ‘righteous’ application is warranted.

Hope this helps, Ignazio.

-‘

Thanks everybody for your insightful answers. What I am looking for, though, is a bit different: a brief definition (on different axes) of what highbrow and lowbrow culture ( not people) are and how they differ from each other on distinct, measurable (be it by experts or through surveys) features. 

Ignazio. Seriously. Would you define baseball without the mention of baseball players? Of course not. 'Highbrow and lowbrow describe what HUMAN BEINGS do and are defined accordingly. End of discussion.

Talking about 'high-brow' CULTURE does not vitiate that reality. Rather, it describes the context giving rise to 'high-brow' and/or sustaining and nourishing high-brow. More importantly still, the cultural standpoint your are looking for is NOT your term 'high-brow' unless you insist on incorrect usage (I wrote that long word study for a reason, pal). you are NOT supposed to be inquiring after 'high-brow' but rather elitism', for reasons the word study makes evident.

Furthermore, cultures as you are intending them are NOT distinguished as 'intellectual' vs. 'popular'. That may be colloquial, but seriously, Ignazio, you are a scholar, not a high-schooler. Get real here. You lead folks to infer that you suppose what is popular has little stomach for detail or thoughtfulness. Really? And the identification of either the 'elite' or 'high-brow' is so much more than 'intellectual' as to seriously question your wisdom in failing to be serious about these terms. THAT is why we do word studies, Ignazio - to catch correct and avert exactly the mistakes you are making.

I apologize for the length of my piece but you needed to know what a word study is and how it is correctly done. Follow those rules and you will be far ahead of your peers. You wanna make headlines? Do things right. You want to have thousands of people downloading your work? Read a few of mine and you will get an idea of what it requires. I am getting on toward 2700. At SSRN it's over 4300. 

In short, Ignazio,  I didn't spend time on you so that you wouldn't have a clue that I was actually really helping you. Admittedly, the fact that the piece was long also meant that I didn't offer you the operational sub-parts for the purpose of research. I decided it would take too much more space.

By the same token, I hoped you would be able to divine those on your own, largely from the thesaurus entries. Remember 'high-brow'? It was predicated on raised brows. At the time the word was coined the operational criterion was evidence of the raised brow in a circumstance that would allow it to send a message that the average person would unfailingly identify, all of which is sufficient for operational purposes. You therefore need to see the value in those behaviors or expressions that are readily identifiable (thus quantifiable) and that say the same thing. That is where those thesaurus entries come in.

Co-extensively you must establish the distinction between the 'elite' circumstances (not much predicated on operational behavior but instead on wealth, circumstances, status, etc.) and the 'high-brow' that stresses the behavioral aspect. What may or may not accompany an elitist in fact largely defines the high-brow. That is of the essence, and you can't get there without the word study, which is why it is THE single critical answer to your query.

Now I could easily establish the full operational requirements for these two words ('low-brow' is defined with respect to the other, so is subsidiary and marks out behavior and circumstances that dis-enable a 'high-brow' definition and thus does not require operational criteria) but it would mean I'd have a couple pounds of your flesh. I expect you to have the training by this time to work with what I gave you and obtain what is necessary for critical research.

If you are still struggling with this send me a pvt message and we'll see what we can do to get you over the hump. In sum. if you want to be a serious scholar, take scholarship seriously. That is job one. You accomplish that desideratum with aspiration and methodology. The lowly words study is the single most critical tool for the work you are interested in pursuing (methodology publications are the most cited of my work, presumably for some reason or another). 

Ignazio, some food for thought. You are interested in 'elevated' culture or 'high' culture, and want to know what operational criteria are available for testing. In the first place you aren't using the obvious words (elevated, high) that actually say what you mean, but you use a term 'high-brow' that must be defined in behavioristic terms for which there are operational criteria at hand.

But think about this for a minute. WHY are you thinking to need criteria for 'elevated' or 'high' culture? I ask this because I question whether there ARE such criteria. Do we require criteria to assess high or low altitude? No, we use an altimeter that tells us an exact level and we are left to self-determine by additional contexts and perspectives whether what we experience at a given elevation is or is not 'high' And just because something isn't 'high' needn't mean it is 'low'

High and low are rather like hot and cold. The reference for the altimeter is ground. We know that all that we experience as hot or cold and between and beyond, are all just degrees of EMR or in particular its heat release. The reference here is arbitrary and is offered by a thermometer that can take any desired level as a 'ground'

Now the level above ground and the quantity of heat are NOT criteria. They are measured by instruments which, because informing us of data, permit us to apply labels of hot-cold, high-low in accordance with our circumstances. But, you say, are there not criteria to assess and determine and predict these circumstances?

In a word, NO. We are at the north or south poles. Are these criteria for 'cold'? NO. They are NOT criteria for cold. They are universally understood correlates. The laws of nature dictate cold and hot in the environmental context until we bring human factors into consideration. Just because snow is cold needn't mean that snow is a criterion for cold, for the only universal criterion for cold is the absence of heat. Every correlate we note is but an example of the rule, NOT a criterion.

And why, Ignazio, am I harping on this? Because the parallel between high and low elevation has an amazingly tight correspondence with the high and low of culture. And it is largely culture that determines whether we all (or most all of us) whether wealth is high (yes) or poverty low (yes). Poverty and wealth are NO\T criteria any more than the poles. They are cultural givens and need only be identified from the awareness granted by living in a given culture. What is wealth for us need not be so for the Tlingit whose 'coppers' are the marks of wealth, which would give US wealth only if they were rare collector's items that might be auctioned for a million bucks are so,

An American politician who married into serious money was asked how many houses would rank a person as 'wealthy'? He replied, five or more. Even within a culture there are discontinuities in what you are wanting to call 'criteria'. The wealthier you are, the higher the wealth standards relative to others of your own income rank and status. A poorer person would suppose a beautiful home on the bluff as the acme of wealth.

And all we are saying here, Ignazio, is that the ultra-wealthy are a sub-culture and their definition of wealth or elevated of high culture is assessed from that perspective. There can be as many definitions or 'criteria' for high or low culture as there are sub-cultures. At this rate you risk so many variations on the high theme, as also on the low, that, as with saying everything is art, art becomes itself nothing. You are at risk of committing the same error.

You mentioned 'pop' culture. I am giving a lecture at the Tenth Annual Whitehead Conference this June and my topic is to explain how Whitehead's 'process' can help a 'pop' culture influence a parent modal culture. Now, relative to academe, the Whitehead (and Peirce) Societies are essentially 'pop' cultures. Yet relative to the general American culture these folks would rank as very high indeed by educational attainment and interest in intellectual (mentally high) matters.

Yet you, Ignazio, were thinking to define 'pop' as a uniform phenomenon and rank it 'low' relative to those in one of countless possible definitions of 'high' culture. In short, Ignazio, you are arguing yourself into a coffin and every one of your postulates is a nail for that purpose.

Re-evaluate what you really want to do. Why did you want operational criteria to begin with? You haven't thought this through. Aristotle said never to ask questions that don't beget answers. You are seriously in violation of that dictum. If you want to have criteria by which to investigate high or low culture you need a term that admits of those criteria, and 'high-brow' does such, but only as the word study defines it.

I don't mean to be hyper-critical, but you are barking up the wrong tree and it is my duty to help you down. I recommend that until you have maybe twenty or thirty articles in the area with a few thousand downloads you might just benefit by taking this advice very seriously - from an author who developed the metaphysical groundwork for the concepts of office, stewardship and authority.

As a folklorist whose academic interests are often viewed as "lowbrow" or as the "detritus" of culture, I try to help my students by citing the distinction between the category "Religio Licita" (the communal expressive behaviors, institutions and traditions generated, modified and maintained by the official State, Church and Academy) -vs- "Traditio" (the communal expressive behaviors, institutions and traditions that are generated, modified and maintained outside that authority).

Religio licita, usually a powerful hegemony, protects its boundaries by purporting superiority (hence "high-ness") over traditio, sometimes with good reason, but not always.  Clearly, there isn't much logic to the idea that a highly difficult, perfectly executed fiddle tune is a failed symphony.  Nor does it make good sense to criticize the Native American belief that humanity sort of "shimmered" out of animal form, as a "savage" or lowbrow" belief, compared to the "civilized" highbrow notion that pain, travail and death came into the world because a woman was seduced by a talking snake.

As a taxonomy, the religio licita-traditio distinction might be helpful to accurately organize your "high" and "low" material.  Under religio licita we would find academy-taught arts, sciences and beliefs, including mainstream religions; under traditio, we would find vernacular or folk arts, sciences and beliefs, including folk religions.  Notably, as folklorist Don Yoder once put it, the difference between religion and folk religion is the difference between what is preached from the pulpit and what is believed in the pew--not always the same; sometimes unobtrusively parallel, and sometimes in direct conflict.  In any case, traditio will always be there, ready to roil up, and step in as needed, whenever the pulpit fails the pew.

For studies of the high/low juxtaposition in western civilization see:

Stallybrass, P.  and A. White. 1986.  The Poetics and Politics of Transgression.  London: Methuan.

Neulander, J. "Creating the Universe: A Study of Cosmos and Cognition" Folklore Forum 25: 1 (1992)  3-18 [I think this may be available through Researchgate]. 

Thank you, Judith, for an impressive post. The religio licita notion is intriguing and I was not aware of it. What you describe by that label falls pretty much into the *formal* institutional pattern (especially professions), which it should be noted has its own set of traditions, for after all, 'traditio' means simply 'passing on'.

By contrasting this with 'traditio' you therefore introduce an oxymoron of sorts. But you are nonetheless on to something I hope Ignazio can make use of, namely, that there are also common and informal institutions, the former being, for example, civic offices and administrations, political parties, governance philosophies in action, etc., where the informal will take in country clubs, societies, styles (including fads), and much else. This last can also be roughly construed as 'pop' culture of various sorts, though I suspect many would find that a peculiar application (yet there is no adequate definition of this concept that I am aware of).

I hope Ignazio will note your quite correct use of the terms 'high-brow' and its contrapuntal, as also the implied elitism of the religio licita grouping. But the elitism is hardly limited to that formal group, of course, but wherever there is elitism there we typically find high-brow attitudes. And as the high-brow attitudes carry through every one of the above categories, a study of why these attitudes come about would of itself generate a classification scheme predicated upon the one common element that admits of valid operational parameters. Why does glib conversation from high-brow academics remind one of country club fair? Why does each bespeak elitism and why do they express differently as between academe and the country club, if indeed they do?

All of these terms arose from human behavior, but 'high-brow' specifically points to a leading characteristic that can be taken as a baseline in evaluating all that elitism of high culture delivers. For what one is willing to be high-brow about presupposes qualities most of us would accept as 'high', such that a high-brow could by identification offer what also seems religio licita.

Hi Charles,

I'm really not wonderful at Latin, so I may be way off base on this, but my best understanding is that the Latin 'traditio' derives from 'tradere' = treachery.  (Treachery, I suppose, in opposition to religio licita).  I'm not sure, but those who carry out, and hand down tradere might be 'traditors'-- and I'm not sure if this is a cognate of 'traitor,' either (but I would love to know). 

Maybe someone out there knows. 

Best,

Judith

Hi Judith

You know your Latin better than you think. But the devil is in the details, and in Latin they are copious if only because the language was word-short and so long in metaphor so as to cover the necessary usages. Traditio is the received so-called 'transference (=metaphorical gerundive) from the original 'trado' = to put or hand over, to convey, deliver, surrender. The dictionary lists the tranference as "an inheritance, record, memory'. The most famous and enduring example was introduced possibly by Pliny = "consuetudo (customs) a maioribus (ancestors, forefathers) tradita (instruction). See Chambers-Murray Latin-English Dictionary 1997.

This is followed immediately in the leading  Latin-English dictionary by 'traditor' = betrayer, traitor.

'Consuetudo' found its most famous down-stream usage in Bracton's classic Laws and Customs of England = De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae, for which see, e.g.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/153715/De-legibus-et-consuetudinibus-Angliae  ...leading medieval English jurist and author of De legibus et consuetudinibus Angliae (c. 1235; “On the Laws and Customs of England”)

I should note that were we to apply the pejorative as you note we would have no minor confusion, for the religio licita was impliedly pejorative and so the common institutions by contrast were presumed less officious, etc., which the pejorative original to tradition would call into question. Thus 'to pass on' was a dual meaning, the metaphorical one becoming our 'tradition'.

Hope that helps, and thanks again for your addition to the thread.

Best

Thanks so much for your better Latin!  Great to know.

Judith

Hello Ignazio, you may transfer Puffendorfs ( 17. Century) distinction of "natura" and "cultura" into a definition of low.- and highbrough of cultural phenomena although this is Dangerous. Maybe it fits Just as a theorethic frame for your work.

the answer could be find in the profound analysis of anti intellectualism and philistinism

in the works of art.

Highbrow and Lowbrow literally refers to how many ridges people have on their foreheads when they raise/wrinkle their brows. Many wrinkles, high hairline is referred to as a "highbrow" and they are usually more intelligent, have higher aptitudes, and think faster than lowbrows. Lowbrows are more steady and have better memories but take longer to process input. Hence the distinction between "highbrow" and "lowbrow" in terms of taste and sophistication.

Thanks,@ Ye Laird for the link.