Norman Borlaug is probably a greater humanitarian than Bill Gates, but I'm not aware of him doing any philanthropy. Now, you probably come up with metric of philanthropy where, say, Rockefeller beat him (Percentage of then existing human wealth donated?). But most of the measures that come to mind put Bill Gates on top, so while "clearly objectively true" would be going too far, "probably objectively true" is quite reasonable.
What's the difference between philanthropy and humanitarianism? Just donating wealth vs developing it? Is that really a significant thing to distinguish?
A philanthropist is someone who gives a lot of money to charitable causes, with a connotation of noble motives. A humanitarian is someone who acts on their strong desire to help their fellow humans, with a connotation of successfully helping many people. These have a broad area of overlap, but a person can be one without being the other.
One can be a philanthropist without being a humanitarian by, for example, donating large amounts of money to creating wildlife refuges. Charitable giving, but not to humans.
From the other direction, people like Norman Borlaug who devote their careers to helping other people are excellent examples of people who are humanitarians without necessarily being philanthropists.
Yeah, my point is there's a technical difference, but if the end effect is simply creating a benefit to humanity, it doesn't really seem important to distinguish between "philanthropist" and "humanitarian".
So saying Gates is the biggest philanthropist, I guess, is "objectively true" if you're being pedantic, and using philanthropist in the technical sense. My point was that it's not "objectively true" that he's the biggest benefactor of humanity, which is the more general-use term for "philanthropist."
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Norman Borlaug is probably a greater humanitarian than Bill Gates, but I'm not aware of him doing any philanthropy. Now, you probably come up with metric of philanthropy where, say, Rockefeller beat him (Percentage of then existing human wealth donated?). But most of the measures that come to mind put Bill Gates on top, so while "clearly objectively true" would be going too far, "probably objectively true" is quite reasonable.
What's the difference between philanthropy and humanitarianism? Just donating wealth vs developing it? Is that really a significant thing to distinguish?
A philanthropist is someone who gives a lot of money to charitable causes, with a connotation of noble motives. A humanitarian is someone who acts on their strong desire to help their fellow humans, with a connotation of successfully helping many people. These have a broad area of overlap, but a person can be one without being the other.
One can be a philanthropist without being a humanitarian by, for example, donating large amounts of money to creating wildlife refuges. Charitable giving, but not to humans.
From the other direction, people like Norman Borlaug who devote their careers to helping other people are excellent examples of people who are humanitarians without necessarily being philanthropists.
Yeah, my point is there's a technical difference, but if the end effect is simply creating a benefit to humanity, it doesn't really seem important to distinguish between "philanthropist" and "humanitarian".
So saying Gates is the biggest philanthropist, I guess, is "objectively true" if you're being pedantic, and using philanthropist in the technical sense. My point was that it's not "objectively true" that he's the biggest benefactor of humanity, which is the more general-use term for "philanthropist."