Philanthropy Reconsidered

I. Promethean Fire: the Archetype A. Context Very few people today, even professionals, know what the word “philanthropy” means, or how it relates to charitable giving. I have posed the question at professional meetings, and found that not only are there almost as many definitions as there are people in the room, but that few if any care what it means—they see no particular value in defining it. Until recently, it was rarely used; many considered it too fancy and even pretentious for ordinary purposes, so they inclined to the much simpler word and concept, “giving.” Today, though it has become a household word—which is good—its meaning is still lost; folks use it to refer loosely to charitable giving or organizations (which is a start), or worse, to the “non-profit,” “voluntary,” or “social” “sector.” This is how great ideas die, which is in this case tragic, because in truth “philanthropy” has a clear, powerful, inspiring, donor-friendly, meaning and history, which we would do well now to revive. There are three main ways to define words: by conventional usage—what most ordinary people mean when they use it; by etymology—analysis of its parts in root languages; and/or by its history, carefully selecting the more useful precedents. Usually these methods are combined, trying to be reasonable, practical, and significantly useful, while avoiding pedantry on the one hand or banality on the other. With “philanthropy” the confusion and chaos of current usage needs correction by etymology and history. II. Philanthropy’s Finest Hour: the American Revolution A. Introduction We have noted that few practitioners in “philanthropy” today care very much how the word is defined, and that what we have called the “Classical” humanistic or humane concept of philanthropy, based on its original coinage in Prometheus Bound, has a clear and inspiring meaning and tradition which can be stated in modern terms as, “private initiatives for public good, focusing on quality of life.” So—what? Does any of this matter? This chapter offers a case in point. American historians, through no particular fault of their own, have not known that “private initiatives for public good, focusing on quality of life” might be a subject for historical study. If, for example, “philanthropy” is defined as “rich people helping poor people,” it is then a subject that is marginal at best in American historiography—nice, decorative, perfectly respectable, but relatively trivial to the main lines of interpretation of our national development and experience. If, on the other hand, “private initiatives for public good, focusing on quality of life” is an objective phenomenon, it can be studied, especially when it is institutionalized—a subject of historical analysis paralleling the histories of government and of the economy, the other two sectors. In that case, it suggests a reconsideration of our national history—not least because ours is the first modern democracy, a form of government in which philanthropy plays a leading role. “Democratic and philanthropic” springs to life as a subject for historical review. In this chapter, to exemplify the potential fruits of such a review, we shall focus on the American Revolution and the founding of our national gov20 ernment. This will not be a history of those events, but rather an analysis of their philanthropic content and its significance. The Revolutionary period was certainly a time, and perhaps the only one so far, when America had a leading culture that might be called “philanthropic.” A hardy perennial question for historians and others ever since has been, What made our Founding Fathers so extraordinarily gifted and high-minded in their great work together? The answer we propose is: their philanthropy, in the Classical mode. If this is so, it has instructional and edifying value for us today—it means that we already have an example to learn from, not just of individual heroic American philanthropist role-models, but of what a philanthropic culture might be and do for our national history.... B. The Case in Point Alexander Hamilton, in the opening paragraph of the very first Federalist Paper, launched the Founders’ advocacy for the ratification of our Constitution with these words: 21 “It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force. If there be any truth in the remark, the crisis at which we are arrived may with propriety be regarded as the era in which that decision is to be made; and a wrong election of the part we shall act may, in this view, deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind. This idea will add the inducements of philanthropy to those of patriotism, to heighten the solicitude which all considerate and good men must feel for the event. Happy will it be if our choice should be directed by a judicious estimate of our true interests, unperplexed and unbiased by considerations not connected with the public good.” [Emphases mine.]