The given sentence is missing in the paragraph below. Decide where it best fits among the options 1, 2, 3, or 4 indicated in the paragraph.
Sentence: While taste is related to judgment, with thinkers at the time often writing, for example, about “judgments of taste” or using the two terms interchangeably, taste retains a vital link to pleasure, embodiment, and personal specificity that is too often elided in post-Kantian ideas about judgment—a link that Arendt herself was working to restore.
Paragraph: $\underline{(1)}$ Denneny focused on taste rather than judgment in order to highlight what he believed was a crucial but neglected historical change. $\underline{(2)}$ Over the course of the seventeenth century and early eighteenth century, across Western Europe, the word taste took on a new extension of meaning, no longer referring specifically to gustatory sensation and the delights of the palate but becoming, for a time, one of the central categories for aesthetic—and ethical—thinking. $\underline{(3)}$ Tracing the history of taste in Spanish, French, and British aesthetic theory, as Denneny did, also provides a means to recover the compelling and relevant writing of a set of thinkers who have been largely neglected by professional philosophy. $\underline{(4)}$

Question

There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide where (option 1, 2, 3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit.
Sentence: Understanding central Asia’s role helps developments make more sense not only across Asia but in Europe, the Americas and Africa.
Paragraph: The nations of the Silk Roads are sometimes called ‘developing countries’, but they are actually some of the world’s most highly developed countries, the very crossroads of civilization, in advanced states of disrepair. ___(1)___. These countries lie at the centre of global affairs: they have since the beginning of history. Running across the spine of Asia, they form a web of connections fanning out in every direction, routes along which pilgrims and warriors, nomads and merchants have travelled, goods and produce have been bought and sold, and ideas exchanged, adapted and refined. ___(2)___ .They have carried not only prosperity, but also death and violence, disease and disaster. ___(3)___. The Silk Roads are the world’s central nervous system, connecting otherwise far-flung peoples and places…. ___(4)___. It allows us to see patterns and links, causes and effects that remain invisible if one looks only at Europe, or North America.

Answer 1

Approach (elimination-first): Instead of hunting for the perfect home, knock out the three gaps that break something, and the survivor is the answer.

Step 1 — Kill gap (1): A good opener should set the stage, not resolve a debate. Our sentence already assumes you know the taste-vs-judgment contrast and ends on a specific scholar (Arendt) restoring a “link.” That is end-of-discussion energy, not an opening line. Eliminate (1).

Step 2 — Kill gap (2): The sentence sitting at (2) would split the historical narration. The line before (2) names Denneny’s focus; the line after (2) launches the 17th–18th-century history of the word “taste.” Dropping an Arendt/pleasure reflection between them is a jarring interruption. Eliminate (2).

Step 3 — Kill gap (3): Gap (3) sits between the history-of-meaning sentence and the “tracing the history... recover neglected thinkers” sentence. Both flanking lines are about recovery and history; inserting a dense theoretical aside about pleasure and embodiment here derails that momentum. Eliminate (3).

Step 4 — The survivor: Only $(4)$ remains, and it checks out independently: after the paragraph has built up Denneny’s historical recovery of taste, ending on the richer claim — that taste, unlike post-Kantian judgment, keeps pleasure and embodiment alive, which is what Arendt wanted back — gives a satisfying conceptual payoff.

Final answer: Position (4), i.e. Option 4.

Show Hint

The Correct Option is C

Solution and Explanation

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