ShmoopTube

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[ musical flourish ]

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

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

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Yeah, get out of here. Union angel?

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Okay, movin' on.

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

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Evolutionism... Universe... Boundless possibilities.

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

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Ah, primitive mind...

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Prescientific scope and breadth...

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

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

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And here are the potential answers.

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[ mumbles ]

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

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We're about to plunge into some deep thoughts.

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

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

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

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and how philosophers should ignore 'em.

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

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

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

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

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

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Minor detail.

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

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

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

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philosophers to ignore both things would be an apocalyptic

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plot worthy of a super villain.

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

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D doesn't make the cut, either.

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This whole essay is basically the speaker telling modern scholars

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

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

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modern scholars had it all figured out.

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This statement cancels out the essay's

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

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Option C is pretty close.

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The speaker says material success

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is partly responsible for people being too confident about

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their ability to control the world.

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

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

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

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

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on the quest for happiness that find it most.

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

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

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that we're definitely not trying to be happy.

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Nope.

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[ crash ]

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