Race, Ethnicity, Nationality, and Philosophy
Race, Ethnicity, Nationality, and Philosophy
A Response
In this chapter, Jorge J. E. Gracia responds to criticisms about his philosophy of race, ethnicity, and nationality. In his book Surviving Race, Ethnicity, and Nationality: A Challenge for the Twenty-First Century (2005), Gracia has claimed that philosophy's role not only contributes substantially to the understanding of race and ethnicity but also is in many ways essential to it. This chapter contains Gracia's reflections on what philosophy provides that other disciplines do not, the very understanding of race and ethnicity, and the boundaries between them, and the boundaries between them and other closely related phenomena, such as nationality. Gracia discusses the objectivity of philosophical theories in general and how that affects the notions of race and ethnicity, as well as the related notion of nationality; the argument that philosophy is limited and cannot carry out a constructive task that goes beyond that of other disciplines of learning; and whether a metaphysics of race and ethnicity in particular is a descriptive or prescriptive enterprise. Finally, he considers an effective set of conditions for race, ethnicity, and nationality.
Keywords: race, Jorge J. E. Gracia, philosophy, ethnicity, nationality, Surviving Race, metaphysics
Columbia Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .
