The historian claims that Alexander the Great should not be judged by current notions of justice, rather he should be judged by the standard of his own culture. The historian breaks this down further into individual questions that must be looked at in order to correctly judge Alexander; one of which is: "Did Alexander elevate the contemporary standards of justice?"
The student responds by pointing out that this specific question required by the historian to accurately judge Alexander's notions of justice actually goes against the standard put forth by the historian, i.e. that Alexander should be judged by the standards of his own culture, since to judge whether Alexander elevated the contemporary standards of justice, "one must invoke standards other than those of his own culture."
This is exactly what answer choice (E) delineates: "claiming that one of the historian's criteria for judging Alexander is inconsistent with the principle that the historian has advanced."
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odevittNovember 4, 2015
Can you explain this please? I think the above answer goes with another question.
MehranNovember 9, 2015
Thank you for your question.
In responding to the historian, who is speaking of the past, the critic invokes a comparison to the present--"certainly on TODAY's statute books there remain many laws . . ." In this way, the critic's response implies an analogy between the present and the past. In other words, the critic is saying, "look, think of all the laws on today's books that regulate activities people don't engage in anymore," in an effort to say that the fact that there was once a law setting tariffs on timber imports from Poran likewise does not necessarily establish that a timber trade was actually conducted between those two ancient nations.
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