RC Question 27 Explanation
DISCUSSION: The author’s views can broadly be summed up as three statements:
- Determinist theories are wrong.
- Yet they are comforting, and the urge for them is understandable.
- Therefore, we should make a new, correct theory of history focussed on particular events, that allows for a narrative.
The right answer uses the first point above. Unusually, all of the wrong answers flat out contradict the passage.
___________
- The second to last sentence of paragraph 3 says we might get narrative satisfaction from the author’s preferred type of theory!
- In the middle of paragraph 3, the author said we should contemplate historical contingency. So the author does not think we should avoid it: to contemplate something is to think about it.
- The author’s point was that universal laws of history are wrong! See the last sentence of paragraph 2.
- The author thinks Freud and Marx were wrong! See the end of paragraph 2. Freud and Marx’s works seemed sensible in the 19th century as their theories had seemingly explained developments up till that point. But the author said the theories failed over time as they didn’t predict future events.
This means that Freud and Marx’s theories were wrong. A good theory explains the past and predicts the future. If a theory merely explains the past but fails at the future, that means the explanation of the past is likely wrong too. It’s easy to plausibly (but incorrectly) explain something in hindsight. - CORRECT. The third paragraph justifies this. The author says that we don’t believe in universal theories, and that believing in historical inevitability (i.e. laws) is “a vain hope”. This means that there are no universal historical laws.
After that, the author lays out their own theory of history based on contingent (i.e. unpredictable) events.
Anyway, since universal laws aren’t real, then it follows that using the (false) idea of universal laws would be bad for history.
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