Race: The History of a Word

Historically, race has been an extremely important & commonly used word in the last like 500 years. But, like all words, the history of the word race is complicated. You see, the contemporary definition of the word race just didn’t pop up out of nowhere. It’s changed quite a bit. In this video we explore the etymology and history of this word from Plato & Aristotle all the way to David Hume & Voltaire.

TRANSCRIPT

PHILOSOPHY

Citations:

Hudson, Nicholas. “‘Nation to ‘Race’: The Origin of Racial Classification in Eighteenth-Century Thought.” Eighteenth-Century Studies, vol. 29, no. 3, pp. 247–264. Spring, 1996, https://doi.org/http://www.jstor.org/stable/30053821.

Ward, Julie K., and Tommy L. Lott, editors. Philosophers on Race: Critical Essays. Blackwell, 2002. Buy Here!

Lewis, Bernard. Race and Slavery in the Middle East: An Historical Enquiry. Oxford University Press, 1992. Buy here!

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