PT8.S1.Q22 - For the writers who first gave feudalism its name...

Broccoli

So, I chose B at first and then changed to C for BR. Now I know why B and C both cannot be the correct answer for this question.

B talks about dominant class which we don't know anything about.
C talks about social class which its different from noble class in the premise.

The correct answer for this question was A...
(A) To say that feudalism by definition requires the existence of a nobility is to employ a definition that distorts history.

I understand the answer until "is to employ a definition that distorts history"... How does it distorts history..?
Can somebody explain why A is a correct answer?

Thank you!

Admin note: edited title

akistotle

[Other people's argument]
Feudalism presupposed the existence of a noble class.
F --> NC

[Author's argument]
But the existence of a noble class requires laws sanctioning titles etc.
NC --> law (/law --> /NC)
In 8th century, feudalism existed. But laws sanctioning titles first appeared in 12th century.
8th century: F and /law

---

F and /NC

(A) sort of says: /(F --> NC)

Sami

Tough question.
In order to get this correct, we have to separate the facts from the definition.

We know that Feudalism existed in Europe in 8th Century but without the hereditary transfer of legally recognized titles and nobility. The hereditary transfer came in 12th C.

We also know that noble class ---> inheritance of titles to be sanctioned by law.

So we can conclude that noble class did not exist in 8th century. But according to the stimulus Feudalism existed.

So in 8th Century Feudalism existed without noble class and without titles being legally sanctioned.

The writers who are defining Feudalism, their definition goes something like this:

Feudalism exists ---> noble class
But we know from history in the stimulus that Feudalism existed without noble class in 8th century so the writers definition distorts 8th century history making answer choice A correct.

leoxnardx

Very very tricky question, and I got it wrong. But here is how i figured it out.

For traditional knowledge, we know that feudalism presupposes the existence of nobility. In lawgic, that is Feudalism --> Nobility. Presuppose = require. According to author's own definition, nobility requires legal recognition. N --> L.

So from that we can conclude that F --> N --> L.

Now comes the fun part. Before 12th century, there was no legal sanction. So /L, contrapose that back we get /L -- /N -- /F. In english, it goes like "Without legal sanction, there should not be nobility, so there is no Feudalism." But we know that Feudalism existed back in the 8th century, back when there was no legal sanctions for nobility. Therefore we get a situation where the lack of legal sanction (/L) did not prohibit the existence of feudalism, a situation that violates the /L-->/F lawgic we just had.

So now we know that the logic chain does not have to be the case, according to the historical fact that feudalism could live without legal sanction without nobility. Answer A matches this. It is saying that the notion that Feudalism HAS TO presuppose Nobility does not match up with historical record.