\nWestern analytical philosophy has contributed two major elements<\/strong>
\nto the theory of the political good.<\/strong>\u00a0It is unfortunate that the
\nvalue of the\u00a0first element,<\/strong>\u00a0personalism<\/strong>,\u00a0has been diluted by its close<\/strong>
\nassociation with the<\/strong>\u00a0second element<\/strong>,\u00a0valuational solipsism.<\/strong>
\nPersonalism was developed in response to the belief that nations,
\nstates, religions, or any other corporate entity have interests that transcend
\nthe interests of the individuals that comprise them.\u00a0The central<\/strong>
\ntenet of personalism, therefore, is that institutions are good or bad<\/strong>
\ninsofar as they are good or bad for the individuals that are affected<\/strong>
\nby them<\/strong>. Institutions are not good, for example, because they preserve
\nthe nation\u2019s culture or because they protect the natural world,
\nunless preserving the nation\u2019s culture or protecting the natural world
\nis good for the individual. As a philosophical assumption, personalism
\nis most useful in countering arguments for practices that harm
\nindividuals in the name of \u201cthe greater good,\u201d or the \u201csociety at large.\u201d
\nThe personalist credo basically states that when it comes to interests,
\nthere are no interests but human interests.
\nHowever, an excessive devotion to the theory of personalism may<\/strong>
\nlead one to fall into the trap of valuational solipsism.\u00a0<\/strong>The word
\nsolipsism derives from the Latin for \u201clone self\u201d\u00a0and the theory of valuational<\/strong>
\nsolipsism takes the isolated individual as the sole judge of<\/strong>
\nvalue.<\/strong>\u00a0The problem with this viewpoint is obvious.\u00a0By using the individual<\/strong>
\nas the measure of the good, valuational solipsism neglects to<\/strong>
\nconsider the whole range of social values that are part of the political<\/strong>
\nexperience<\/strong>.\u00a0These values include<\/strong>\u00a0citizenship, status, and\u00a0community<\/strong>,
\nnone of which can exist without reference to other individuals.
\nInstead, political theories are based entirely on non-social values such
\nas happiness, material welfare, and utility, which are not dependent
\non interactions with others.\u00a0Such a view obscures a fundamental<\/strong>
\nquality of the political good.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>
\n
\nNow that we\u2019ve bolded the key elements in the passage, let\u2019s try to paraphrase those elements in a numbered outline:<\/span><\/p>\n\n- The Western theory of the political good has two elements: personalism and valuational solipsism.<\/li>\n
- Thesis<\/strong>: The value of personalism is in danger of becoming weakened by its close association with valuational solipsism.<\/li>\n
- Personalism measures the good of a nation based on the good it brings to the people.<\/li>\n
- An excessive devotion to personalism may result in the trap <\/em>of valuational solipsism, the idea that the individual is the sole judge of value.<\/li>\n
- Valuational solipsism is bad because it neglects the social values, like community, that contribute to the political experience, thus obscuring the fundamental qualities of the political good.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Notice that most of the key information comes in the first and third paragraphs. It would be a mistake to characterize this passage as a simple description of two elements of political theory. While the second paragraph is devoted to describing the first element, the rest of the passage tries to explain the reason for\u2014and the unsettling consequences of\u2014the close association between the two elements of political theory. Explaining the relationship between the two is really the purpose of the passage, and we get most of that information in the third paragraph, which is more densely marked up than the second paragraph.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If all of us had an unlimited amount of time to answer reading comprehension questions on the GMAT, then we\u2019d probably all do quite well; after all, the information needed to answer the questions correctly lies in the passage. The time limit on the test means we have to sift through a large amount of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28911,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[55],"tags":[56,515],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13585"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13585"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13585\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36447,"href":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13585\/revisions\/36447"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}