In Part I Voegelin analyzes contemporary race theories by placing the question of race in the context of the more comprehensive philosophical problem of the interrelationships of body, mind, and soul.

He demonstrates the intellectual shortcomings and theoretical fallacies of current theories; more important, he contributes to the development of a modern philosophical anthropology that aims, as Helmuth Plessner put it in a review of Race and State, "at a concept of the human being that does justice to its multilayered existence as a physical, vital, psychic, and intellectual being, without making one of these layers the measure and explanatory basis for the others.".

In Part II Voegelin deals with race ideas, which he distinguishes from race theories. Race ideas, like other political ideas, form a part of political reality itself, contributing to the formation of social groups and societies. Voegelin shows that the modern race idea is just one "body idea" among others, such as the tribal state and the Kingdom of Christ, each offering a different symbolic image of community.

He traces the rise of the modern race idea, analyzes its function to structure community, and offers an answer to the question of why race ideas became successful in Germany.