"The Nazis tried to exterminate a community famed for rational reflection. Here 23 authors reflect on that event, with an outcome that is chilling but also stirring for those who think that the greatest of human achievements is the ability to stay rational. Everyone who cares about humanity should read some of these essays."
—Library Journal
"This is a profound and eloquent collection. The essays, both individually and cumulatively, provide impressive, penetrating insights that are of very great help in the continuing and mandatory task of coming to intellectual and emotional grips with the unspeakable tragedy of the Holocaust."
—Alan Gewirtb, University of Chicago
"A wonderfully informative and also a very moving book, which helps one to understand much better than before the appalling events whose causes it probes. Anyone interested in human beings should read it. For moral philosophers it is a ‘must.’"
—Philippa Foot, UCLA
The Nazis tried to exterminate a community famed for rational reflection. Here 23 authors reflect on that event, with an outcome that is chilling but also stirring for those who think that the greatest of human achievements is the ability to stay rational. Of course, as Kenneth Seeskin reminds us, rational calculation breaks down in the face of such evil. Better criteria and methods would not make a difference, as shown by the very title of George M. Kren's essay ``The Holocaust and the Failure of Ethical Theory.'' But Hans Jonas argues that we can still believe in a neo-Platonic God who suffers with us. Everyone who cares about humanity should read some of these essays. Leslie Armour, Univ. of Ottawa, Canada
