The attitudes toward dance that emerge from contemporary publications differ vastly from the ideals of expression, beauty and lofty virtue that concerned Duncan as she was inventing her performance style.
The strongest challenge that Legalism raises to virtue ethics is not that stable virtues are impossible to achieve, but that they are not realistic possibilities for most persons, and that therefore lofty virtue ideals cannot provide the basis for a large-scale social ethic.
"WE AWAIT your arrival impatiently because we admire your noble principles and lofty virtues," gushed an open letter from Sheikh Ali Yusuf, a Muslim cleric who, long ago, was Egypt's most popular columnist.
Writing for The Verge, TC Sottek described Reddit as "a kleptocracy that speaks to lofty virtues while profiting from vice," and the continuing proliferation of the images on the site will undoubtedly be seen by some as supporting this evaluation.
These are tightly packed, severely constructed works; with their intense intellectualism and their ethereal exquisiteness, these two cycles of colossal miniatures are worthy to stand alongside Chopin's Nocturnes and Brahms's intermezzi; yet their lofty virtues of severity and intimacy are among the reasons why they have been largely overlooked in the shuffle of musical history.
Nevertheless, they would not be wrong to detect an unexamined assumption lurking in the western scorn for Mo Yan's proximity to the Chinese regime: that Anglo-American writers, naturally possessed of loftier virtue, stand along with their governments on the right side of history.
Mishra asked if we "ever expose the political preferences of Mo Yan's counterparts in the west to such harsh scrutiny", and said there was an "unexamined assumption lurking in the western scorn for Mo Yan's proximity to the Chinese regime: that Anglo-American writers, naturally possessed of loftier virtue, stand along with their governments on the right side of history.
"I thought the door was for self expression," I pleaded, (self expression being one of the loftiest virtues in our home).
Blair may have been shifty, Brown may be surly, but neither could be compared to their American counterpart without looking like political giants, men of lofty intelligence and virtue.
There's nothing inherently evil about wanting to be profitable, and there's no virtue in embracing a lofty vision while your business tanks.
Hays heralded Kennedy as "exceedingly American" (historian Cari Beauchamp explains the connotation: "not Jewish," in contrast to most of the studio heads), while celebrating Kennedy's "background of lofty and conservative financial connections, an atmosphere of much home and family life and all those fireside virtues of which the public never hears in the current news from Hollywood".
