PrepTest 158, Section 1, Question 15
Passage A is adapted from an essay by(467 more words not shown)
Passage A(235 more words not shown)
Passage B(240 more words not shown)
The authors of the two(8 more words not shown)
- Adespite widely held(13 more words not shown)
- Bthe fact that(17 more words not shown)
- Ccurrently widespread views(14 more words not shown)
- Dhistorical scholarship that(15 more words not shown)
- Ean inferior kind(17 more words not shown)
Reading the passage
B tells us directly where Kewes agrees with Ricks: he is right to reject reducing moral standards to expressions of power. She also acknowledges that some scholarship wrongly projects present-day ideological concerns onto the past. Start with that shared criticism, rather than treating her disagreement with his overall approach as disagreement with everything he says.
What we’re looking for
The answer needs support from both positions. A claim made by just one historian won't do.
Working the answers
- A
This is the collapse of the plagiarism–imitation distinction that Ricks criticizes. Kewes's agreement with his criticism doesn't turn her into a supporter of the position he rejects.
- B
Both reject this inference. A expressly says that a lack of universal agreement doesn't make moral standards merely expressions of power, and B calls Ricks's dismissal of that reduction justified.
- C
Neither account establishes that today's views are more stringent than those of most predecessors. B describes changing meanings and applications, but change doesn't tell us its direction or establish this comparison with most earlier people.
- D
Kewes explicitly resists this conclusion: reconstructing past attitudes need not vindicate them. A historian can explain how someone thought without relieving that person of responsibility. D treats a possible misuse of historical analysis as its inevitable result.
- ECorrect
Kewes states this problem directly in her discussion of scholarship that projects modern ideologies onto earlier controversies. Ricks's criticism of Rosenthal supplies the corresponding example: her contemporary preoccupation with power drives the interpretation of Renaissance plagiarism and displaces the moral distinctions he thinks matter. The shared objection is to imposing that framework on the past.
More Author's Opinion questions
Learn the LSAT our way
Our platform drills Author's Opinion questions at your level and adjusts as you improve.