The word philanthropy comes from the Greek φιλανθρωπία (Philanthropía = love for Humanity), composed by φίλος (Philos = Friend or lover) and ἂνθρωπος (Anthrópos = man, Human being). Philanthropist is, then, the one who professes love to his fellows, a very charitable person. Example, Teresa of Calcutta.
I, Ismael Gerli, consider it an absolute mistake to confuse philanthropy with charity, Christian charity or whatever. It has nothing to do with it even if it looks like it. The word φιλανθρωπία was coined by the Greeks to designate the feeling of that which is human and therefore similar to any other human being, and exercises in its conduct the comprehension and the humanitarianism by pure feeling of natural solidarity and without understanding it like Charity to anyone, but as equity, and at the same time values human culture to the utmost and respects and accepts above all else.
This the Romans call it Humanitas, of where humanism, which is the posture of the universalization of the human values and their culture, of the nothing of the human I consider alien, and of the prepending of all the human values above even of any religious precept . This was the basis of the anthropocentrism characteristic of the Greco culture, humanism and Anthropocentrism recovered in the Renaissance in front of the medieval theocentrism. It is an ethical stance and also a cultural stance that has nothing to do with religions and that came to its summit in the illustration of S. XVIII that would end up generating universal declarations of human rights. Indeed the abundant philanthropists of the s. XVIII they dedicated their actions to projects that benefit the common human gender and their concrete society, and the struggle for the expansion of rights over ethnic groups, nationalities, religions, etc.
The difference between a charitable religious is that this helps for example an outcast with alms (charity), following a precept of love for others and trying to earn eternal salvation. The philanthropist will try to fight so that there is no marginalized, working or influencing his society to provide education and resources, so that the outcast has the possibility of not being, without more personal reward to contribute to an equal human gender and All the more peaceful and advantageous for all, even for those who are not marginalized. Humanism and the concept of philanthropy is a universal ethic that has bequeathed us the classical Greek and Roman world.
