Sociologist: Romantics who claim that people are not born evil but may be made evil by the imperfect institutions that they form cannot be right, for they misunderstand the causal relationship between people and their institutions. After all, institutions are merely collections of people.
Which one of the following principles, if valid, would most help to justify the sociologist’s argument?
(A) People acting together in institutions can do more good or evil than can people acting individually.
(B) Institutions formed by people are inevitably imperfect.
(C) People should not be overly optimistic in their view of individual human beings.
(D) A society’s institutions are the surest gauge of that society’s values.
(E) The whole does not determine the properties of the things that compose it.
A. Obviously, a group of 100 people can do more harm than one person—but that doesn’t show whether being in a group changes an individual's capacity for evil, or simply combines their existing capacities.
B. Irrelevant. This doesn’t clarify whether institutions merely consist of individuals or if forming an institution actually alters those individuals. Either way, it doesn’t challenge the sociologist’s point.
C. The sociologist made no claims about optimism or the average level of evil in people, so this misses the point.
D. The argument wasn’t about defining social values—it only addressed whether institutions can shape individual values.
E. Correct. If institutions can’t affect the individuals within them, then the sociologist’s claim—that institutions influence values—would be undermined.
