ShmoopTube

00:00

[ musical flourish ]

00:03

And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by ethical neutrality.

00:07

There's right, there's wrong,

00:09

and there's... meh. [image of 3 ladies wearing feather wings]

00:12

All right, check out the following passage.

00:13

[ mumbles ]

00:21

Which of the following is the grammatical equivalent of "hitherto"? [Question related to passage]

00:25

And here are the potential answers.

00:29

All right, well, even if we've never heard the word "hitherto,"

00:32

we can still use context to get the right answer. [a lady writing something]

00:35

The easiest thing to do is swap each option for "hitherto"

00:39

and see if the sentence still works.

00:41

We'll begin with E.

00:42

It doesn't work to stick the word "specifically" in "hitherto"'s place.

00:46

Well, there's just no need for "specifically" here.

00:48

Why would the speaker need to clarify that he's specifically

00:51

speaking about philosophy in the first sentence? [Man talking to a lady about philosophy]

00:54

He starts out talking about philosophy, so we don't need to be

00:57

told that's what he's specifically talking about it. He's just talking about it.

01:00

All right, we're beating a dead horse here. That's a gross expression. [eyes of a horse popping]

01:03

All right, choice C makes the same mistake as E,

01:06

just more obviously. This is the first sentence, so nothing's been mentioned before.

01:10

All right, while we're at it, we'll nix B for the same reason. {Evaluating options]

01:13

We also only use the word "nevertheless" when we're referring

01:16

to an earlier point. We'd say,

01:18

"She didn't like Brad because he had bad breath. [a girl disgusted by the boy's breath]

01:21

Nevertheless, she went out with him because she felt bad for him."

01:24

But it makes no sense to start off

01:26

with just "Nevertheless, she went out with him."

01:29

And then there's choice D. We usually use the phrase

01:32

"to all appearances" when something appears [narrator evaluating options]

01:35

to be something it's not. We might say,

01:37

"To all appearances, Brad was just a stinky dork,

01:39

but then she found out he was a sick DJ." [DJ playing some music]

01:42

Well, the phrase doesn't work in the first sentence of this passage, though.

01:46

It'd make sense if the speaker's larger point were that

01:48

contrary to popular belief

01:50

philosophy has been ethically neutral.

01:52

That's the opposite of what he's saying, though, so option D is eliminated.

01:56

The correct answer is A. In philosophy, [narrator continues reading]

01:58

thus far, ethical neutrality has been seldom sought

02:02

and hardly ever achieved.

02:03

"Thus far" means "up until now"

02:06

and the speaker is talking about the fact that philosophy has

02:08

been in sore need of some ethical neutrality for quite a while. [a Doctor talking to his patient]

02:12

When we were kids and we stole cookies from the cookie jar,

02:14

our parents told us we were in the wrong, and we told them

02:16

they oughta try a little ethical neutrality. [boy stealing a cookie from a cookie jar]

02:18

[ squeaking ]

Full Transcript