This passage, which appears without variation at the end of four of Euripides' tragedies and with slight variation in a fifth,1 is perhaps the most notorious of the brief sequences of lines, usually anapaestic and usually assigned to the chorus, with which nearly all the extant plays of Sophocles and Euripides conclude.2 Unlike the more varied final speeches of extant Aeschylean tragedy, which are closely integrated with the play's concluding action, these passages often seem almost detachable from such action, a (...) comment upon or merely after finished business rather than a part of its finishing. In some instances there is general scholarly agreement that the concluding lines are relevant to the action of a play, but many of these passages have been variously dismissed by scholars - as interpolations, as mere dramatic conveniences, or as intentional throwaways. (shrink)

Nurse leaders, including clinical nurse educators, who exercise stewardship at the point of service, may facilitate practising nurses' articulation of their shared value priorities, including respect for persons' dignity and self-determination, as well as equity and fairness. A steward preserves and promotes what is intrinsically valuable in an experience. Theories of virtue ethics and discourse ethics supply contexts for clinical nurse educators to clarify how they may facilitate nurses' articulation of their shared value priorities through particularism and universalism, as well (...) as how they may safeguard nurses' self-interpretation and discursive reasoning. Together, clinical nurse educators and nurses may contribute to management decisions that affect the point of service, and thus the health care organization. (shrink)

There is an explanatory constraint on practical reasons: practical reasons have to be the kinds of things that we can act for. Some philosophers, notably Bernard Williams, have argued that the explanatory constraint favours internalism about reasons: for an agent to have a reason to x, it is at least a necessary condition that she would, after ideal deliberation, be motivated to x. Internalism suggests that naturalism about reasons is more plausible for, in this view, reasons are psychological states. However, (...) reasons must not only be the kinds of things we can act for, at least some reasons must be good reasons, i.e. normative requirements. Derek Parfit argues that internalist, naturalist accounts cannot capture the normative aspect of reasons. He takes this to be a point in favour of his own externalist, non-naturalist account. I ask first whether Williams' account does fail to account for the normativity of reasons as Parfit argues, and second whether Parfit's externalist account can adequately meet the explanatory constraint. Although I claim that the answer to the first question is yes and the second no, the answer to both questions turns on the nature of practical rationality. My case stands if practical rationality is procedural, and falls if practical rationality is substantive. I argue, however, that the burden of proof is on those who, like Parfit, wish to defend a substantive account of practical rationality. S. Afr. J. Philos. Vol.24(2) 2005: 97-108. (shrink)

The line in question occurs towards the end of Orestes' final exchange with Clytemnestra, after her attempts at self-defence have all met with rebuttal.

In his recent book, Happiness: personhood, community, purpose, Pedro Tabensky answers the question of what happiness is. He develops an Aristotelian account of happiness that, he claims, is every one's maximally rational ideal. Much of the support for this claim rests on what Tabensky calls the method of critical introspection. This method involves introspecting on the kind of beings that we are and the kind of lives we can thus lead. If properly carried out, Tabensky claims, critical introspection will reveal (...) to any individual that the active life of virtue is in fact the maximally rational ideal. I argue that two features of Tabensky's account undermine this claim. The first is his account of the method of critical introspection itself. The second is his account of the nature and acquisition of virtue developed in his analogy between living and painting, and in his discussion of the eudaimon community. Tabensky's account of critical introspection carried out at the general level of persons shows only that it works negatively to identify the kind of lives we could not lead as persons. It does not function positively to reveal that the maximally rational life for any person is the active exercise of virtue. Tabensky does suggest that the method carried out by particular individuals will reveal the kind of life they should be leading. However, it follows from Tabensky's account of the nature and acquisition of virtue, I argue, that critical introspection can only reveal the active life of virtue to be the maximally rational ideal for those individuals who have had the right sort of upbringing in the right sort of community. S. Afr. J. Philos. Vol.23(4) 2004: 375-382. (shrink)