This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen, by Tadeusz Borowski,

This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen
by 

Tadeusz Borowski,

Barbara Vedder (Editor/Translator)

, 

Jan Kott (Introduction)

, 

Michael Kandel (Translator)

Timmy Cham's review

Jun 11, 2020  ·  edit

it was amazing

Powerful stories based on the author's experiences at Auschwitz and Dachau. Deserves to be read side-by-side with Man's Search for Meaning and Night.

For the record, Borowski's view of human nature and freedom is more pessimistic than Frankl's.

I wrote up some "Discussion Questions" for this one:

Two of the central concepts of existentialism is human freedom and responsibility. The following two readings post interesting questions concerning these concepts:

1) Man's Search for Meaning
2) This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen

Here's a few questions concerning these two readings. Both Frankl and Borowski wrote about their experiences in German concentration camps during World War II--but they seem to have drawn different lessons from their common experiences:

1) What does Frankl say about human freedom? Is it possible to be "free" in a concentration camp, according to Frankl? In what sense?

2) Would Borowski agree with Frankl--or does he seem to be more pessimistic about what happens to humanity amidst the horrors of a concentration camp?

3) Several years after his liberation from the concentration camp, Borowski committed suicide (at age 29, in 1951). Frankl, on the other hand, didn't commit suicide (dying at age 92, in 1997). Why do you think these two men reacted so differently to their concentration-camp experiences? Do their writings provide any clues?

The Psychology of Consciousness by Robert Evan Ornstein

The Psychology of Consciousness
by

Robert Evan Ornstein

 

I've been re-reading and re-reading this book over the years. The most helpful part of it is (for me) was his page outlining various writers comparing and contrasting the "Two Modes of Consciousness" (in Chapter 2, pp. 36-39 of the 1972 edition):

I'd really love to write a research report on each of these contrasting modes, at some point. :) But Ornstein deserves credit for putting the two side-by-side in such a perspicuous way.

Teaching Plato In Palestine: Philosophy in a Divided World, by Carlos Fraenkel

Timothy Chambers

Teaching Philosophy (December 2016), pages 531-534. A pair of basic questions inspires Carlos Fraenkel's book: 1) "Can doing philosophy be useful outside the confines of academia?" 2) "Can philosophy help turn tensions that arise from diversity into a 'culture of constructive debate'?" This review sketches Fraenkel's project.

 https://www.scribd.com/document/341426588/Timothy-Chambers-Review-of-Teaching-Plato-In-Palestine-By-Carlos-Fraenkel

Timothy Chambers, Review of Science and the World, By Jeffrey E. Foss

Science and the World: Philosophical Approaches, edited by Jeffrey Foss [Book Review]

Timothy Chambers

Teaching Philosophy 38 (4):459-463 (2015)
 https://www.scribd.com/document/294239408/Timothy-Chambers-Review-of-Science-and-the-World-By-Jeffrey-E-Foss

Even a cursory review of the literature brings to light scores of articles treating the topic of “student relativism,” including several essays appearing in this journal.1 Not surprisingly, several commentators sense that student relativism finds a partial source in a thesis we might dub student positivism: the view, roughly, that “scientific knowledge . . . is the only valid knowledge.” (524) Stephen Satris, for instance, describes encountering a “typical student reaction . . . that while scientific facts (which can be proven) might be an exception, everything else—opinions, views, feelings, values, lifestyle, ideals, activities, religion, taste—is after all relative”; Richard Momeyer notes a similar student distinction between “those quantitative, ‘scientific’ areas of inquiry in which real knowledge is attainable (‘facts’), and those fields of inquiry not yet blessed by scientific method, such as philosophy, where all is a matter of (subjective) non-confirmable opinion.”2 If, as these authors suggest, a reflexive student relativism partially results from a simplistic view of the natural sciences, then this provides one strong motivation for texts which aim to provide, as does this anthology, “a philosophical introduction to science . . . ready-to-read by the average freshman straight out of high school.” (xiii) Foss has gone to great lengths in his effort to make this text so-“ready-to-read” by newcomers to academic philosophy.

Review of "Debating Christian Theism"

Timothy Chambers

Debating Christian Theism. J.P. Moreland, Chad Meister, and Khaldoun A. Sweis (eds.). New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2013, xv + 554 pp. $35.00 pbk. ISBN 978-0-19-975543-1.

Chambers, Timothy (2015) "Review of "Debating Christian Theism"," Essays in Philosophy: Vol. 16: Iss. 2, Article 9. http://dx.doi.org/10.7710/1526-0569.1537

Timothy Chambers, "Reasonable Atheism a Moral Case for Respectful Disbelief" by Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse

Timothy Chambers, "Reasonable Atheism a Moral Case for Respectful Disbelief" by Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse

 https://www.scribd.com/doc/212590443/Timothy-Chambers-Reasonable-Atheism-a-Moral-Case-for-Respectful-Disbelief-by-Scott-F-Aikin-and-Robert-B-Talisse

Timothy Chambers, Review Of "Philosophy of Religion: An Introduction," by Michael B. Wilkinson and Hugh N. Campbell

"Philosophy of Religion: An Introduction," by Michael B. Wilkinson and Hugn N. Campbell [Book Review]

Timothy Chambers

Teaching Philosophy 35 (3):305-308 (2012)

https://www.scribd.com/document/109614303/Timothy-Chambers-Review-Of-Philosophy-of-Religion-An-Introduction-by-Michael-B-Wilkinson-and-Hugh-N-Campbell

Timothy Chambers, Review of "The Little Philosophy Book," by Robert Solomon

Review of "The Little Philosophy Book," by Robert Solomon

Timothy Chambers

Teaching Philosophy 32 (3):315-321 (2009)

 https://www.scribd.com/document/19683125/Timothy-Chambers-Review-of-The-Little-Philosophy-Book-by-Robert-Solomon

Review of Black Bodies, White Gazes: The Continuing Significance of Race by George Yancy (Goodreads Author)

Black Bodies, White Gazes: The Continuing Significance of Race 
by 

George Yancy (Goodreads Author)

We average Americans’, observed Eric Holder in February 2009, ‘simply do not talk enough with each other about race.’ The Attorney General’s diagnosis of this deficit was a national failure of nerve: ‘We always have been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards.’ Seeking to overcome such cowardice in his new book Black Bodies, White 
Gazes: The Continuing Significance of Race, George Yancy’s tools are as varied as his subject: phenomenology and existentialism, literature and current events, calm analysis and charged classroom illustrations. The result is a blueprint of racism’s mechanisms that 
Cornel West has pronounced ‘the most philosophically sophisticated treatment we have of the most visceral issue in America and modernity.’ Bringing together the insights of numerous thinkers – Douglass and DuBois, Husserl and Sartre, Toni Morrison and Frantz Fanon 
– Yancy attempts to unpack, in turn, the white gaze and how it denigrates the black body; how this denigration threatens to violate its victims’ subjectivities, and how such violations can be resisted; and, finally, how whites evade responsibility for the wreckage their 
gaze still wreaks, but can yet recognize, and resist, its ‘ambushes’.

This is part of a review which was published in "Radical Philosophy" vol 156 (July/August 2009): pages 56-59. pdf files can be found at 
https://www.scribd.com/doc/93514995/Timothy-Chambers-The-Elevator-Effect-Review-of-Black-Bodies-White-Gazes-The-Continuing-Significance-of-Race-by-George-Yancy

and
  https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/reviews/156-reviews