If the Blessed Oprah is to be Armstrong's confessor, she will have to be convinced that he is sorry for what he has done, and that he has made "a firm purpose of amendment" to virtue.
As I noted at the beginning of this essay, human beings have no functions, no purposes, in virtue of which their qualities can be evaluated, except those they themselves decide to adopt.
Lockstep consensus is cultivated not with chewily carnivorous troglodytes flaunting wanton violence and cruel spews of gore but with purpose and virtue, devotion and tradition, in the unimpeachable and unexceptionable name of liberation.
Unfortunately, there are few tests of renal function which are able to detect early functional abnormalities and which, at the same time, are suited for screening purposes by virtue of their simplicity, cost and safety.
The basis of the Rescript was that Japan's unique form of government, the kokutai, was based on a historic bond between benevolent rulers and loyal subjects, and that the fundamental purpose of education was to cultivate virtues, especially "loyalty" and "filial piety".23 The practice of emperor worship was further spread by veneration of the imperial portrait.
Arguing that the purpose of political association is liberty, not virtue, and that the very definition of liberty's great antagonist, tyranny, is the accumulation of all power in the same hands, he urged the division of the three functions of government among three separate institutions.
It's clear that part of the purpose of these budgets — and their greatest virtue, to my mind — is to get Republican lawmakers used to taking tough votes on Medicare reform, so that they're prepared to take those same kind of votes if and when their party holds the Senate and the White House.
For the Cynics, the purpose of life was to live in virtue, in agreement with nature.
Moreover, he thought that philosophers had conceived locutionary acts, not as abstractions from illocutionary acts, but rather as things that might be done without any illocutionary purpose, just by virtue of the linguistic expressions employed or their meanings.
Mr. Khodorkovsky is no paragon of virtue.
