Q1

[khaleesiwantstodolaw]

For this question, I picked the correct answer, D. But was hoping somebody can verify my reasoning for eliminating answer choices A and E.

Is A wrong because King's philosophy was influenced only by Thoreau's essay on Civil Disobedience and not by "any other writing of the transcendentalists."

And, is E wrong because of the narrow scope of the answer? Also, because King's ideas about law and civil disobedience were NOT "influenced by transcendentalism in general" since the only transcendentalist work he was aware of was Thoreau's Civil Disobedience.

Thanks!

[ohthatpatrick]

I think you nailed it. King was only familiar with Thoreau's work; the author just thinks it's noteworthy how much of King's work even better matches the thinking of other transcendentalists.

This passage has a clear (what I like to call) "Most Valuable Sentence", and in classic form it's after a But/Yet/However.

As soon as this passage begins Nearly every X has thought Y , my LSAT brain anticipates that the author's purpose in this passage will be to Clarify a Misconception. More specifically, I'm waiting for the But/Yet/However that introduces the author's thesis.

We get that in line 9 - 17. If you reread (D) and match it up with that line, you'll see the close correspondence between the two halves of choice (D) and the "first"/"second" in line 9 - 17.

So in addition to how you were eliminating (A) and (E), we might also convince ourselves that (D) is the closest fit for the juicy thesis sentence we have in 9-17.

Nice work.

[keonheecho]

I'm not really seeing a significant difference between B and D. Can someone explain the difference and why D is better?

[ohthatpatrick]

Great question. Just to be thorough (or should I say Thoreau), (C) is wrong because it's too narrow, and Thoreau was more concerned with reform of the individual (not economic reform).

(B) and (D) are unusually close. I would focus on each difference and try to pick a winner.

Clearly everything leading up to the first comma is interchangeable with (B) and (D).

(B) forces us to find things like
"King was greatly influenced" by transcendentalist "philosophers".

(D) forces us to find things like
"there are parallels between King and transcendentalism" and "they haven't been fully appreciated".

Again, the two big differences there are
1. Trascendentalism or specific transcendentalist philosophers?

2. Greatly influenced? or Underappreciated parallels?

To the first issue, were there specific transcendentalist philosophers named (besides Thoreau)?
There's Emerson and Fuller. They're identified as transcendentalist writers. Certainly, with real world knowledge, we might say they belong to some school of philosophy, but the passage doesn't identify them that way.

This is not a clear dealbreaker to me, but I would give the edge to (D).

To the second issue, we find concrete reinforcement for "underappreciated parallels" in our thesis sentence. Meanwhile, we CAN'T find a sentence that says King was influenced by a number of TP's. In fact, in our thesis area, we hear the opposite.

Line 17 says that "Civil Disobedience" was THE ONLY example of transcendentalist writing with which King was familiar. So how could King have been greatly influenced by these TP's if he had only read one essay by Thoreau?

And line 14-16, "an overemphasis on [Thoreau's influence] ... has kept historians from noting other correspondences" provides strong support for "underappreciated parallels".

When you're down to 2, isolate the differences and look them up in the passage!

Hope this helps.