The Invention of Racism in Classical AntiquityThere was racism in the ancient world, after all. This groundbreaking book refutes the common belief that the ancient Greeks and Romans harbored "ethnic and cultural," but not racial, prejudice. It does so by comprehensively tracing the intellectual origins of racism back to classical antiquity. Benjamin Isaac's systematic analysis of ancient social prejudices and stereotypes reveals that some of those represent prototypes of racism--or proto-racism--which in turn inspired the early modern authors who developed the more familiar racist ideas. He considers the literature from classical Greece to late antiquity in a quest for the various forms of the discriminatory stereotypes and social hatred that have played such an important role in recent history and continue to do so in modern society. |
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... characteristics are determined by external influences ( climate ) and then , after many generations become he- reditary ( i.e. , acquired characters became hereditary ) . This combination of envi- ronmentalism and a belief in the ...
... characteristics.29 25 Immanuel Kant , Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönen und Erhabenen ( Königsberg , 1764 ) , reprinted in Gesammelte Schriften ii , translated as Observations on the Feeling of the Beauti- ful and Sublime ( 1764 ) ...
... characteristics and abilities are determined by race . b . Racialism . " Racialism , an unfortunate word , 48 is then defined in Oxford's second edition as follows : " Belief in the superiority of a particular race leading to prejudice ...
... characteristics which constitute the soul of races , and to show how the history of a people and its civilisation are determined by these characteristics " ( p . xvii ) . well in practice thanks to the broad interpretation of " 22 ...
... characteristics are not by definition held to be stable , unalterable , or imposed from the outside through physical factors : biology , climate , or geography . It is , of course , possible to think in racist terms without using the ...