Although we may be mistaken about something we have ourselves experienced, we often take direct experience to be valid on its face. How do we know about events that occurred outside our ken? The distinction between knowledge as truth, based on direct knowledge, and mere opinion unhinged from direct observation, has a long lineage. It has given birth to the field of epistemology, the study of truth and how best to obtain and represent it. The tutorial will consider the matter of truth and its telling using events in the Holocaust. How can we, who have no direct personal knowledge of the events of the Holocaust, come to know it? There is a wide variety of ways of representing truth: memoir, testimony, documents of the time, oral history, each derived from participants. There are also accounts given by non-participants: documentary producers, historians, sociologists, and others using their disciplines. In addition to concerns about inaccuracy, truth is often altered by the purpose of the inquiry. For example, legal proceedings consider evidence under specific rules to determine issues of guilt. We will begin with some classic philosophical statements on truth (Plato, Aristotle, and James Madison). In all of the instances we shall explore what it means to determine facts; gain comprehension, assign blame (legal or moral, or both); and, the challenge of point of view (contrasting objective historical depiction at a distance as against subjective intimate experience as a participant). Format: tutorial. Requirements: each student will write and present orally an essay of approximately seven double-spaced pages every other week on an assigned topic (the written essays will be briefer in the first month, 5-6 pages, somewhat longer in the second, 6-7, and 7-9 in the third). Students not presenting have the responsibility of critically reviewing the work of the colleague. There will be a final written exercise and students will be evaluated on this exercise, their essays, and their critical reviews. No prerequisites. Enrollment limit: 10 (expected: 10). Open to all. Political Philosophy Subfield