Self-study
P1
Most people acknowledge that not all governments have a moral right to govern and that there are sometimes morally legitimate reasons for disobeying the law, as when a particular law prescribes behavior that is clearly immoral. ██ ██ ████ ████████ ████████ ████ ████ █████ ███ ███████ ██████████ ███ █████ ██ ████████ ███ ████ ████ █████████ ██ ███████ ███ ███ ██████ ██ █ ██████ ██ ████ ██ ██████ ██████ ███ ███ █████ ███ █████ ██ █████████ ████ █ █████ ████ ██ ████ █ ███ ██████ ███████ ██ ██ ███ ████ ███
Most people's perspective ·
Moral duty to obey law because it's law; some rare exceptions
Philosophical anarchism (PA) ·
No moral duty to obey law just because it's law
Commentators' perspective ·
Reject PA because PA has 2 implications that are absurd
PA allegedly implies (1) all governments are morally equal, and (2) people are morally allowed to do whatever they want (kill people, commit fraud, etc.)
Rejection of commentator's perspective ·
PA does not have those 2 implications
P2
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Deny implication 1 ·
PA can hold that some governments are morally better than others
We can still evaluate morality of government policies/actions based on how much good and harm those policies/actions lead to.
P3
Deny implication 2 ·
PA doesn't have to think people can do whatever they want
People still have moral duties not to harm others (a duty that doesn't stem from law). Also, There's a moral duty to help others, which might justify supporting government policies/actions. And, there's a moral duty to follow laws if failing to follow them leads to harm.
Passage Style
Critique or debate
22.
The author's stance regarding the ██████ ██ █████████████ █████████ ███ ████ ██████████ ██ █████████ ██ ███ ██
Question Type
Author’s attitude
Implied
This is an Inference question about the author’s attitude toward PA. The author spends P2 and P3 defending PA against the commentators and reinforcing some of its key positions, so we can infer that he accepts at least some aspects of the theory.
a
ardent approval of ████ ███████ ██ ███ ██████
Unsupported— too strong. The author seems to approve of some aspects of the theory, but his approval isn’t “ardent.” Also, we don’t know whether the passage even addresses most aspects of PA, so we can’t infer that the author approves of most aspects of the theory.
b
apparent acceptance of ████ ██ ███ █████ █████████ ██ ███ ██████
Supported. The author spends P2 and P3 defending PA against the commentators’ criticisms. He also reinforces some of its basic positions— that we can
c
concerned pessimism about ███ ████████ ███████ ██ █████ ███████ ███████ █████
Anti-supported. The commentators think that PA includes certain extreme views— that all governments are morally equal, and that people are morally allowed to do whatever they want. The author does believe that the theory avoids these extreme views, but he isn’t pessimistic about it. Instead, he seems to approve of the theory’s positions.
d
hesitant rejection of ████ ██ ███ ███████ ████████ ██ ███ ██████
Anti-supported. Since the author spends P2 and P3 defending PA against the commentators and reinforcing some of its basic positions, we can infer that he actually accepts some of the central features of the theory.
e
resolute antipathy toward ████ ███ ██████ ███ ███████ ██ ███ ███████ ████████████
Anti-supported. The commentators seem to dislike the logical consequences of PA, but the author spends P2 and P3 defending the theory and rejecting the commentators’ criticisms. We can infer that he actually accepts at least some aspects of the theory.