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.
“The place beyond heaven—none of our earthly poets has ever sung or ever will sing its praises enough! Still, this is the way it is—risky as it may be, you see, I must attempt to seek the truth, especially since the truth is my subject. What is in this place is without color and without shape and without solidity, a being that really is what it is, the subject of all true knowledge, visible only to intelligence, the soul’s steersman. Now a god’s mind is nourished by intelligence and pure knowledge, as is the mind of any soul that is concerned to take in what is appropriate to it, and so it is delighted at last to be seeing what is real and watching what is true, feeding on all this and feeling wonderful, until the circular motion brings it around to where it started. On the way around it has a view of Justice as it is; it has a view of Self-Control; it has a view of Knowledge—not the knowledge that is close to change, that becomes different as it knows the different things which we consider real down here. No, it is the knowledge of what really is what it is. And when the soul has seen all the things as they are and feasted on them, it sinks back inside heaven and goes home.” (Phaedrus 247c-e)
Happy Holidays strange thinkers! Don’t forget! ALL HOLIDAYS MATTER!!! So Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, Merry Festivus, Happy Kwanzaa, Get your Saturnalia on, or however your holy days self-identify. Here are books you need in your life!
Aristotle. Complete Works Part 1. Translated by Jonathan Barnes, Princeton Univ. Press, 1995. Buy here!
Aristotle. Complete Works Part 2. Translated by Jonathan Barnes, Princeton Univ. Press, 1995. Buy here!
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan(New York: Vintage Books, 2009), 20-21. Buy here!
Michel Foucault, Power: (The Essential Works of Foucault, 1954-1984, Vol. 3), trans. R. Hurley, ed. J. Faubion (New York: The New Press, 2015). Buy here!
Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality: an Introduction. Translated by Robert J. Hurley, Vintage, 1990. Buy here!
Foucault, Michel. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977, edited by Colin Gordon, by Michel Foucault, Longman, 1980, pp. 109–133. Buy here!
Foucault, Michel. “Society Must Be Defended”: Lectures at the collège De France, 1975-76. Translated by David Macey, Picador, 2003. Buy here!
Pull Yourself Together: A True Story of Alternate Realities, Spiritual Healing, and Dimensional Wholeness. Buy here!
Deleuze, Gilles. Difference and Repetition. Translated by Paul Patton, Columbia University Press, 1994. Buy here!
Federici, Silvia. Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation. Autonomedia, 2014. Buy here!
Farmer, Philip Jose. Riders of the Purple Wage. Buy here!
Laozi. Tao Teh Ching 1. Translated by John C. H. Wu, Shambhala, 2003. Buy here!
Wang, Bi. The Classic of the Way and Virtue: a New Translation of the “Tao-Te Ching” of Laozi as Interpreted by Wang Bi, translated by Richard John Lynn, by Lao Zi, Columbia University Press, 1999. Buy here!
Laozi. Tao: A New Way of Thinking: A Translation of the Tao tê Ching with an Introduction and Commentaries, translated by Chung-Yuan Chang, Singing Dragon, London, 2014. Buy here!
Laozi. Tao Te Ching a Bilingual Edition. Edited by Wang Bi. Translated by Dim Cheuk Lau, The Chinese University Press, 2001. Buy here!
Zhuang, Zhou. The Essential Writings: With Selections from Traditional Commentaries. Translated by Brook Ziporyn, Hackett, 2009. Buy here!
Popper, Karl Raimund. Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. Routledge, 2002. Buy here!
The Ecology of Attention by Yves Citton. Buy here!
Einstein, Albert. Relativity, the Special and the General Theory: A Popular Exposition by Albert Einstein. Translated by Robert W. Lawson, Crown Publishers, Inc., 1961. Buy here!
Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature, Barnes & Noble, New York, NY, 2005. Buy here!
Schulman, Sarah. Conflict Is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility and the Duty of Repair. Arsenal Pulp Press, 2017. Buy here!
Deleuze, Gilles. Nietzsche and Philosophy. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson, Columbia University Press, 1986. Buy here!
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs, translated by Walter Kaufmann, Vintage Books, New York, 1974. Buy here!
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None. Translated by Walter Kaufman, The Viking Press, 1966. Buy here!
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, translated by Walter Arnold Kaufmann, Vintage Books, New York, 1989. Buy here!
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. Twilight of the Idols and the Anti-Christ. Translated by Reginald John Hollingdale, Penguin Books, 2003. Buy here!
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. On the Genealogy of Morality: A Polemic. Hackett Pub. Co, 2009. Buy here!
Singal, Jesse. The Quick Fix Why Fad Psychology Can’t Cure Our Social Ills, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2021. Buy here!
