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AP English Language Videos 129 videos

AP English Language and Composition 2.3 Passage Drill
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Description:

As much as we'd like to advocate for eating pizza and watching Game of Thrones , we think it'd be a better idea to answer this AP English Language and Composition question first. Winter will still be coming when you're done.

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:00

[ musical flourish ]

00:03

And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by good and evil.

00:06

Maybe take a turn on someone else's shoulders, would ya?

00:09

Yeah, get out of here. Union angel?

00:12

Okay, movin' on.

00:13

All right, we're reading about philosophy... Good versus evil...

00:16

Evolutionism... Universe... Boundless possibilities.

00:20

Religion... See all these key words we're picking out here for you?

00:24

Ah, primitive mind...

00:27

Prescientific scope and breadth...

00:29

Fallacious... Sounds kind of dirty, but it's not.

00:32

Okay. Here we go. Which of the following is suggested by the speaker?

00:37

And here are the potential answers.

00:38

[ mumbles ]

00:43

Hmm. Interesting. Oh, boy, well, break out your scuba gear.

00:46

We're about to plunge into some deep thoughts.

00:48

Remember deep thoughts from Saturday Night Live? Do they still do that these days?

00:52

All right, well, let's begin by nixing option A.

00:55

The speaker does a lot of talking about notions of good and evil

00:58

and how philosophers should ignore 'em.

01:00

But he never claims that society's morals were created by just a few people.

01:04

Man, what would it have been like to be on that committee?

01:07

Imagine Shmoop on that committee. It would not be pretty.

01:10

All right. Option E uses some of the words the speaker uses,

01:13

but it doesn't actually touch on any of his ideas.

01:16

Minor detail.

01:17

He says that philosophers ought to ignore ideas of fate and good and evil.

01:22

But this makes it sound like our destiny is somehow decided by our moral values.

01:27

Well, if the speaker thought this were true, then telling

01:29

philosophers to ignore both things would be an apocalyptic

01:32

plot worthy of a super villain.

01:34

We'll give him the benefit of the doubt and move on.

01:37

D doesn't make the cut, either.

01:38

This whole essay is basically the speaker telling modern scholars

01:41

that they're still way too concerned with notions of good and evil.

01:45

There'd be no reason for him to write this essay if he thought

01:47

modern scholars had it all figured out.

01:50

This statement cancels out the essay's

01:51

reason for being, and there's nothing more depressing than that.

01:54

Option C is pretty close.

01:56

The speaker says material success

01:58

is partly responsible for people being too confident about

02:01

their ability to control the world.

02:03

But he doesn't say that rich people think the world is fundamentally good.

02:07

Though things have to look a little rosier when you're sitting on the deck of your yacht.

02:12

All right, well, choice B is the way to go.

02:14

The speaker directly says that it's people who are not

02:16

on the quest for happiness that find it most.

02:19

It's like you trip over happiness and you just find it sitting there right in front of you.

02:23

In that case, we would like to announce to the universe

02:25

that we're definitely not trying to be happy.

02:27

Nope.

02:28

[ crash ]

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