The word “philanthropy” elicits images of the wealthy using their bounty
establishing scholarships or contributing to institutions helping the poor to assist the less fortunate. Or perhaps employing their riches to endow art museums, libraries, museums and public art, enabling others to enjoy values otherwise undersupplied. These philanthropic examples are certainly appropriate, but by themselves they are misleading, for they suggest love of humanity –phil-anthropy – is the exclusive preserve of society’s most fortunate. Humankind, upon which the philanthropists exercise their beneficence, constitutes a relatively passive and needy target of their Olympian good will.
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