Philanthropism (from the Greek philanthropía, “humaneness,” “benevolence [towards humans]”; current from Plato on) has referred since the early 19th century to a theory of education rooted in the Enlightenment. It came to maturity in the 1760s in northern Germany and Denmark, after being developed gradually – beginning in 1752 – by Johann Bernhard Basedow, Johann Andreas Cramer, and Martin Ehlers, pedagogues working chiefly in S…