Altruism, philantropy and humanism: The conceptual-historical aspects of solidarity

Abstract

This paper presents two main versions of altruism: the filantrophy and the humanism, their most developed historical forms and ways of legitimation. It is shown why private property, market and profite maximization are not inconsinent with the philantrophy and why it is not in accordance with the humanism. One should consider the role of philantrophy in the apology of capitalism.The paper compares two clasical writings: Marx-Engels? ?Manifest of the Communist Party? and Andrew Carnegies essay ?The Gospel of Wealth?. In addition, it explores historical development, main features and the limitations of solidarity both in humanism and in philantropy in religious and in secular life as well as the types of philantrops and humanists and the contemporary philantrocapitalism in USA and Germany. There are two kinds of the philantropy criticism: (1) Non systemic one, which warns on the different abuses of philantrops, but which doesn?t deny the system?s foundations, and (2) Systemic one, which does?nt separate the criticism of philantropy from the criticism of capitalism itself. Special attention is dedicated to the usage of symbolic capital in the philantropy and to different doubts about the sincerity of benefaction.There is difference between apstract humanism which only comdemn the inhumanity, on the one side, and the theory of real humanism, as the lever by means of which one should put down exploatation and oppression of human beings. One is able to differentiate between ideological explanations of charity, philantropic and humanistic attempts in the epochal consciousnesses of the different historical ages from the antiquity to neoliberalism. Humanism prevailed during the Cold War in socialism, whereas philantropy has become hegemonic since the collapse of European socialism. Humanism was rooted in critism of the private property, while philantropy serves to promote and the bouergoies values. The conclusion is that the philantrophy relieves misery on the level of distribution, while humanism tries to annihilate the misery on the level of production.