Social historians have noted that European social and political thought of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was marked by the popularity of "grand theories," influential intellectual movements such as Freudianism or Marxism that attempted to account for a broad range of historical phenomena with a single, ambitious explanation. ███
Intro ·Grand theories
"Grand theories" attempted to account for a broad range of historical phenomena with a single, ambitious explanation.
Author's Argument ·Grand theories' decline is an opportunity
Historical explanations can now focus on the contingent, the particular, and the novel; it can provide narrative satisfaction without having to view history as fully determined.
Passage Style
Single position
27.
It can be inferred from ███ ███████ ████ ███ ██████ █████ ████ ██████ █████ ████ █████ ███ ██ ███ █████████ ███████████
Question Type
Author’s perspective
Implied
It’s difficult to predict the answer merely from the question stem, so let’s rely on process of elimination.
a
Since history is ███ █████ ████████████ ██ ██████ ████ ███ █████████ █████████████
Anti-supported. The author doesn’t believe we cannot hope for narrative satisfaction.
Anti-supported. The author wants us to give attention to historical contingency.
12%
c
There are enough ████████ ██████ ██ ███ ████████ ███████████ ██ ███████ ███ ██████████ ███ █████████ ████ ██ ████████
Anti-supported. The author doesn’t believe history is subject to universal laws. It’s “vain” to hope for historical inevitability. (Note that the reference to “laws that constrain rather than necessitate” doesn’t support this answer, because laws that constrain aren’t universal laws in the sense that “universal laws” is used in the passage.)
10%
d
The works of ████ ███ █████ ██████████ ███ ██████████ ███████████ ████ ██████ ██ ████ ███ ████████ ██████ ██ ███ ██████████ ████████
The author doesn’t suggest that we should use grand theories to study the 19th century. Although the author does acknowledge that Marxism and Freudianism were not implausible explanations of events up until the time those theories were formed, this doesn’t constitute a recommendation to use those theories. Those theories can still be wrong or worse than other theories even if they still provide plausible accounts of 19th century events.
15%
e
The study of ███████ ██ ████████ ██ ███ ██████████ ██ █████████ █████████
Supported. The author wants to avoid a historical perspective that views history as fully determined or subject to universal truths or laws.
46%
Answer five questions and we'll estimate your score.
Stems asking us to infer an idea implied by the claims in the passage (as opposed to identifying an idea that appears explicitly). Similar to most strongly supported questions in LR.
