PrepTest 110, Section 4, Question 10
Tragic dramas written in Greece during the fifth(450 more words not shown)
It can be inferred from(21 more words not shown)
- Awhether or not(13 more words not shown)
- Bwhether or not(14 more words not shown)
- Cwhether or not(13 more words not shown)
- Dwhether or not(15 more words not shown)
- Ewhether or not(14 more words not shown)
Reading the passage
Rivier makes divine necessity decisive. Lesky says divine pressure matters, but Agamemnon's own desire for victory matters too. My first phrasing would be whether the character has any real choice of his own.
What we’re looking for
The answer may put that less abstractly. Look for the personal contribution Lesky preserves and Rivier's account takes away.
Working the answers
- A
Knowing the consequences isn't the disagreement. A person could understand what will happen while still having no free choice about it.
- B
Both interpretations give the gods a role. Whether the character acknowledges that role isn't the difference described.
- CCorrect
“Own desires” gets at the personal contribution. Lesky says Agamemnon acts on desires that “are his own”—his military ambition helps explain the decision. Rivier says deliberation only reveals the path divine necessity dictates. So the relevance of the person's own desires captures our prediction about personal choice, even though it uses different words.
- D
Lesky does connect personal desire to condemnation. But the central disagreement isn't whether the gods' actions matter to a moral evaluation. It's whether the person's motives help produce the action alongside divine constraint.
- E
No one compares the ethical quality of the protagonist's desires with the gods' desires. Condemning Agamemnon doesn't establish that his motives are more ethical than theirs.
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