Crux, Aeon Timaeus: The Metaphysics of Race as Externalized Difference

This paper argues that the metaphysics of race requires a diagnostic category that is not exhausted by either biological essentialism or social construction. While race lacks biological essence, it nevertheless remains socially and ontologically operative through the field of human appearing. The central claim is that race is best understood as externalized difference: a relational phenomenon abstracted from the living field of human variation, stabilized as category, and returned to persons as