The essays included in this book span a wide range of topics, including the opposition between Greek and "barbarian" in the works of Plato and Aristotle, the notion of racial difference employed in medieval Islamic thought, as well as the existence of racial categories within the social contract and Enlightenment theories of Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Kant. The readings also discuss repercussions in the post-Enlightenment period in the views of Nietzsche, Mill, and Carlyle, and twentieth-century reflections on race in the thought of Heidegger, Dewey, Sartre, and Beauvoir.

Philosophers on Race contributes to the increasing debate on the subject of race by elucidating the philosophical origins of race in Greek and medieval thought and the subsequent development of racial categories in modern Western philosophy.