PrepTest 126, Section 3, Question 1
Aristophanes' play The Clouds , which was written(51 more words not shown)
Which one of the following,(20 more words not shown)
- AAristophanes' portrayal of(13 more words not shown)
- BSocrates' philosophical views(7 more words not shown)
- CMost of the(11 more words not shown)
- DSocrates was a(16 more words not shown)
- ESocrates had an(12 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Maybe Socrates changed his mind.
First, keep the people straight. Aristophanes wrote the play; Socrates is the philosopher portrayed in it. When Socrates was in his mid-forties, the play presented him as an atheist interested in natural science. The other surviving accounts were written after his death at seventy and present a religious dimension and an interest in ethics. That's a substantial stretch of time in which someone's views could change.
Of course, change isn't the only possibility. Maybe the play got him wrong. Maybe the later accounts did. We don't yet know that either portrayal is accurate, much less that Socrates actually changed his views.
What we’re looking for
But we're being asked to help explain the discrepancy, not prove a fact about Socrates from the existing evidence. A change in his interests would do the job: the writers could be describing different stages of the same person's life. Let's look for that.
Working the answers
- A
Being flattering or unflattering doesn't itself explain these particular differences. Someone could praise an atheist's interest in science or criticize that very same interest. We'd still need to know why one account gives Socrates religious interests that the other does not. A tells us the writers' attitudes without connecting those attitudes to the conflicting portrayals.
- BCorrect
His views and interests changed after his mid-forties. Now the differences make sense: an account based on the earlier Socrates could emphasize atheism and science, while a later account could emphasize religion and ethics. Neither description has to capture what he believed throughout his entire life.
- C
We need to explain the two pictures of Socrates. The interests of philosophers who lived before him don't tell us why those pictures differ. Even if he shared their interest in science at one point, we still need the explanation for the later portrayal.
- D
More controversial in what way? Controversy could increase without any change in his beliefs. D doesn't tell us that his views changed or that the controversy caused writers to portray his views differently. It leaves our specific discrepancy unresolved.
- E
His influence on later philosophers doesn't explain the conflicting descriptions of him. Those philosophers could have taken an interest in science from Socrates regardless of how his own views developed. We need information connecting the earlier portrayal to the later one.
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