Jorge J. E. Gracia

Jorge J. E. Gracia (July 18, 1942 – July 13, 2021) was a Cuban-born American philosopher who was the Samuel P. Capen Chair, SUNY Distinguished Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Department of Comparative Literature in the State University of New York at Buffalo. Gracia was educated in Cuba, the United States, Canada, and Spain, and received his Ph.D. in Medieval Philosophy from the University of Toronto. Gracia authored or edited over forty books. His areas of specialization included Metaphysics/Ontology, Philosophical Historiography, Philosophy of Language/Hermeneutics, Ethnicity/Race/Nationality Issues, Hispanic/Latino Issues, Medieval/Scholastic Philosophy and Hispanic/Latino/Latin-American Philosophy. While Gracia's earlier work was primarily in the areas of Medieval Philosophy and Metaphysics, much of his recent work has focused on issues of race, ethnicity and identity. His contributions to the philosophical study of race and ethnicity have been groundbreaking. It is within this area that Gracia proposed his familial-historical view of ethnicity and his genetic common-bundle view of race. These views of race and ethnicity have helped to shape the field and addressed many issues that previous theories had left unanswered. Gracia was the founding chair of the APA Committee for Hispanics in Philosophy, past president of the Society for Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy, past president of the Society for Iberian and Latin American Thought, past president of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, and past president of the Metaphysical Society of America. Gracia had a number of Ph.D. students, such as Peter Redpath, William Irwin, Robert Delfino, Jonathan Sanford, Daniel Novotný, etc. who have become professors at academic institutions.