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A Tapestry of Pain

The general capacity to feel pain is part of being human, yet it is subject to a number of seeming paradoxes. For one, we alone must endure the pain in our own bodies, yet we readily observe pain in others and expect that they suffer from it as we do. Furthermore, while we fear pain and condemn those who wantonly inflict it, violence in all its forms and meanings fascinates us. It is these, and other, paradoxes that Arne Johan Vetlesen, professor of philosophy at the University of Oslo, discusses in his recent book 'A Philosophy of Pain'. The diversity of phenomena and contexts through which pain manifests itself inevitably leads to a certain degree of eclecticism. The result, writes reviewer Chuanfei Chin, is less an analysis of pain and a model of its 'circulation' in society, but a more or less loosely woven tapestry of observations -- one that may not be strong enough to bear the weight of the author's ambitious project, but one whose patterns nonetheless stimulate the reader.

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The Great Rubber Robbery: How Julius Fromm’s Condom Empire Fell to the Nazis

In 'Fromms: How Julius Fromm’s Condom Empire Fell to the Nazis', Götz Aly and Michael Sontheimer tell a meticulously researched story of how entrepreneur Julius Fromm, who had built a lucrative enterprise around a series of inventions and improvements of latex production techniques, lost his 'condom empire' in the process of 'Aryanization' in Nazi Germany. However the injustice persisted until well after the fall of the Nazi regime. Following Julius's death in 1945, the Fromm family attempted to regain possession of their property, yet in 1951 they were merely offered a settlement that required the Fromms to pay (!) 174,300 West German marks to Otto Metz-Randa who, as a profiteer of the 'Entjudung' had gained ownership in 1939. Why then, asks reviewer Leon Rocha, did the American publisher tone down the original title of the book, 'Wie der jüdische Kondomfabrikant Julius F unter die deutschen Räuber fiel' ('Fromms: How the Jewish Condom Manufacturer Julius F. Fell Prey to German Robbers')?

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