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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... thinking , intellectual and emotional concepts as well as attitudes towards select specific peoples as encountered in Greek and Latin literature of the period concerned . It focuses on bigotry and social hatred in antiquity . This may ...
... thinking . The method applied here must also be somewhat different from the study of ethnicity , a subject which ... thinking about skin color is to ask : When did Europeans start thinking of themselves as white ? " There was no ...
... thinking is found fully developed in Buffon's writings . " Buffon writes that donkeys are degenerate 15 14 Buffon's output and popularity was remarkable ; see Jean Pivetau ( ed . ) , Oeuvres philosophiques de Buffon ( Paris , 1954 ) ...
... thinking and this necessarily ignores many authors who resisted such patterns , for instance the remarkable and cou- rageous philosopher Helvetius ( 1715-1771 ) , who firmly denies any correlation between physical and mental ...
... thinking developed and accepted in the ancient world . It will be argued here that this continuity is sufficient to allow us to speak of Graeco - Roman forms of proto - racism . It should be noted that the examples cited here from the ...