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: ____(1) ____. Denneny focused on taste rather than judgment in order to highlight what he believed was a crucial but neglected historical change. ____(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. ____(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. ____(4) ____.
Option 3
Option 1
Option 2
Option 4
Option 3
The correct answer is Option 3.
To determine the best placement for the missing sentence, we must look for contextual clues that link it logically and chronologically to the surrounding text. The missing sentence contains a crucial referencing phrase: "While taste is related to judgment, with thinkers at the time often writing..." The use of "the time" indicates that a specific historical period must have been explicitly introduced in the immediately preceding sentence.
Let us analyze the sentences right before each of the available blanks to find this reference:
Blank (1) is at the very beginning of the paragraph, so no prior context or time period has been established. The missing sentence cannot be placed here.
Blank (2) follows the sentence, "Denneny focused on taste rather than judgment in order to highlight what he believed was a crucial but neglected historical change." While this sentence mentions a "historical change," it does not specify a distinct era, century, or time period that would logically anchor the phrase "thinkers at the time."
Blank (3) follows the sentence, "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."
This sentence explicitly introduces a specific historical timeframe (the 17th and early 18th centuries). Placing the missing sentence in blank 3 provides a seamless logical flow: the preceding sentence establishes "the time," and the missing sentence then immediately elaborates on how thinkers during that specific era related the new aesthetic concepts of "taste" and "judgment." It further contrasts this era's view with later "post-Kantian ideas."
Blank (4) follows a sentence about Denneny tracing the history of taste to recover writings from neglected thinkers. This shifts the focus toward Denneny's methodology and the recovery of these texts, making it too late to insert the definition and contrast of taste versus judgment from the 17th/18th centuries.
Therefore, because blank 3 directly follows the introduction of the exact historical period referenced in the missing sentence, Option 3 is the correct answer.