ShmoopTube

00:00

[ musical flourish ]

00:03

And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by the distorting medium.

00:07

At least it's not as big a problem as the distorting extra large. [Man shopping for blazers]

00:12

All right, check out the following passage.

00:13

[ mumbles ]

00:19

[ mumbling continues ] All right, we're done.

00:25

Which of the following does the author use as an example of the distorting medium?

00:29

Line 12 there.

00:30

And here are the potential answers.

00:32

[ mumbles ]

00:34

All right, well, let's start by taking a look at the full sentence

00:37

in which the quote appears. Right here.

00:39

"In thought, at any rate, those who forget good and evil [Quote from the passage]

00:43

and seek only to know the facts are more likely to achieve good

00:47

than those who view the world through the distorting medium of their own desires."

00:51

Got it.

00:52

So the complete phrase is "the distorting medium of their own desires."

00:57

And it refers to people projecting their own conceptions of good and evil onto the universe. [Image of Space/Universe]

01:01

That's a big projector.

01:02

Our job is to find out which of these choices is

01:05

talking about the same idea. [Man standing on a giant projector]

01:07

We have to say no to choice E.

01:09

Pleasing dreams are products of the distorting medium, not examples. [Shopkeeper waving his hand]

01:13

Word of advice: never buy your products from distorting mediums.

01:16

Things get wonky.

01:18

Option B is also a no.

01:19

The speaker tells us that it takes an element of submission to get [Two men playing chess at a park]

01:22

rid of the distorting medium of ethics.

01:24

That's rough. Can we just call an exterminator? Come on, guys.

01:28

Choices C and D are all related to the opposite of the distorting medium. [someone spraying a can]

01:31

Ethical neutrality, scientific philosophy -

01:35

these are the cures for all the pesky morality that's holding us back. [Man buying something from a store]

01:38

The correct answer is A.

01:41

The speaker specifically says

01:42

"friendliness and hostility" (A)

01:44

"are not the conceptions by which the world is to be understood."

01:48

Sounds like we've found ourselves another distorting medium.

01:51

Let's keep looking. It'll be like a philosophical Easter egg hunt. [Newton, Marx and Voltaire looking for Easter eggs]

01:57

[ clicking ]

Full Transcript