Even to his contemporaries, Rochester was a legendary figure One of the youngest and most handsome courtiers of the restored Charles Ⅱ. he was the favorite of a king whose wit, lasciviousness and serious intellectual interests he shared. He was banished from court several times, but Charles’s pleasure in his conversation always resulted in his recall. His authentic adventures included the attempted abduction of an heiress (whom he later married), smashing a phallic-shaped sundial in the royal gardens during a drunken celebrity, and a violent quarrel with the watch at Epsom in which one of his companions was killed.
Quite apart from his reputation as a poet. he was feted in the writings of his friends, notably in Sir George Etherege’s comedy, "The Man of Mode". Just before he died in 1680. at the age of 33. destroyed by alcoholism and syphilis. Rochester’s legend took a surprising turn. After a series of conversations with an Anglican rationalist divine. Gilbert Burner, the skeptical libertine made a death- bed conversion which was celebrated in the devotional literature of the succeeding century.
Charming as it is. the Rochester legend has always been a distraction It has resulted in many apocryphal stories and uncertain attributions, and it can still divert attention from the poetry. It is Rochester’s achievement as a poet which commands our interest and makes him something more than a luridly colorful period, figure. For all the brevity of his career, Rochester is a crucial figure in the development of English verse satire and file Horatian epistle, a student of his elder French contemporary Boileau. and an important exemplar for later poets as different as Alexander Pope and Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea.
Cephas Goldsworthy’s "The Satyr" gives us the legend. Although there are no footnotes to sources, the book shows some acquaintance with modem Rochester scholarship and its rejection of spurious verse from his canon—but only intermittently. Anecdotes concerning Rochester and his crony George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. are retailed without any indication that they have, in fact. been discredited; poems no longer attributed to Rochester are cited as if they were authentic. Mr. Goldsworthy quotes liberally from the poetry, but repeatedly reads it as straightforward autobiography. For example, we are told that "My dear mistress has a heart" is addressed to. Elizabeth Barry, an actress, which is incautious given the uncertain dating of this song, and indeed of most of Rochester’s poems. More generally, while of course some of the satires include references to actual persons, as often as not in 17th-century love poetry the emotion is genuine but the addressee is fictitious.
A less simplistic way to relate Rochester’s poetry to his life would be to read the former as an exploiation of what it means to live according to libertine values. In his best satires and even some of the lyrics he articulated an anti-rational .nihilistic vision scarcely found elsewhere in English verse. Such a task belongs to a critical biography. There is no mistaking Mr. Goldsworthy’s enthusiasm for his subject, but his book is essentially biography as entertainment.
The word "nihilistic" (Line 3, Par

A:A．5) means______. rational practical opposed moral beliefs pro-government

The classic difficulty felt with democracy arises from the fact that democracy can never express the will of the whole people because there never exists any such unchanging will (at least in any society that call itself democratic). The concept of government of the whole people by the whole people must be looked on as being in the poetry rather than in the prose of democracy; the fact of prose is that real democracy means government by some kind of dominant majority. 　　And the ever-present danger, repeatedly realized in fact, is that this dominant majority may behave toward those who are not of the majority in such a manner as to undermine the moral basis of the right of people, because they are people, to have some important say in the setting of their own course and in the use of their own faculties. Other forms of government may similarly fail to respect human independence. But there is at least no contradiction in that; the underlying assumption of every kind of government by wisers and betters is that people on the whole are not fit to manage their own affairs, but must have someone else do it for them, and there is no paradox when such a government treats its subjects without respect, or deals with them on the basis of their having no rights that the government must take into account. 　　But democracy affirms that people are fit to control themselves, and it cannot live in the same air with the theory that there is no limit to the extent to which public power--even the power of a majority--can interfere with the lives of people. 　　Rational limitation on power is therefore not a contradiction to democracy, but is of the very essence of democracy as such. Other sorts of government may impose such limitations on themselves as an act of grace. Democracy is under the moral duty of limiting itself because such limitation is essential to the survival of that respect for humankind which is in the foundations of democracy. Respect for the freedom of all people cannot, of course, be the only guide, for there would then be no government. Delicate ongoing compromise is what must be looked for. But democracy, unless it is to deny its own moral basis, must accept the necessity for making this compromise and for giving real weight to the claims of those without the presently effective political power to make their claims prevail in elections By "the prose of democracy" ( Par. 1 ) the author most probably means its

A:popular interpretation. B:actual operation. C:ongoing compromise. D:rational limitation.

We assumed ethics needed the seal of certainty, else it was non-rational. And certainty was to be produced by a deductive model: the correct actions were derivable from classical first principles or a hierarchical ranked pantheon of principles. This model, though, is bankrupt.
I suggest we think of ethics as analogous to language usage. There are no univocal rules of grammar and style which uniquely determine the best sentence for a particular situation. Nor is language usage universalizable. Although a sentence or phrase is warranted in one case, it does not mean it is automatically appropriate in like circumstances. Nonetheless, language usage is not subjective.
This should not surprise us in the least. All intellectual pursuits are relativistic in just these senses. Political science, psychology, chemistry, and physics are not certain, but they are not subjective either. As I see it, ethical inquiry proceed like this: we are taught moral principles by parents, teachers, and society at large. As we grow older we become exposed to competing views. These may lead us to reevaluate presently held beliefs. Or we may find ourselves inexplicably making certain valuations, possibly because of inherited altruistic tendencies. We may "learn the hard way, that some actions generate unacceptable consequences. Or we may reflect upon our own and others’ "theories" or patterns of behavior and decide they are inconsistent. The resulting views are "tested;" we act as we think we should and evaluate the consequences of those actions on ourselves and on others. We thereby correct our mistakes in light of the test of time.
Of course people make different moral judgments; of course we cannot resolve these differences by using some algorithm which is itself beyond judgment. We have no vantage point outside human experience where we can judge right and wrong, good and bad. But then we don’t have a vantage point from where we can be philosophical relativists either.
We are left within the real world, trying to cope with ourselves, with each other, with the world, and with our own mistakes. We do not have all the moral answers; nor do we have an algorithm to discern those answers. Neither do we possess an algorithm for determining correct language usage but that does not make us throw up our hands in despair because we can no longer communicate.
If we understand ethics in this way, we can see, I think, the real value of ethical theory. Some people talk as if ethical theories give us moral prescriptions. They think we should apply ethical principles as we would a poultice: after diagnosing the illness, we apply the appropriate dressing. But that is a mistake. No theory provides a set of abstract solutions to apply straightforwardly. Ethical theories are important not because they solve all moral dilemmas but because they help us notice salient features of moral problems and help us understand those problems in context.

A:definite and clear. B:vague and uncertain. C:certain but non-rational. D:relative but not subjective.

Part A
Text 1

A:rational B:practical C:opposed moral beliefs D:pro-government

The classic difficulty felt with democracy arises from the fact that democracy can never express the will of the whole people because there never exists any such unchanging will (at least in any society that call itself democratic). The concept of government of the whole people by the whole people must be looked on as being in the poetry rather than in the prose of democracy; the fact of prose is that real democracy means government by some kind of dominant majority. 　　And the ever-present danger, repeatedly realized in fact, is that this dominant majority may behave toward those who are not of the majority in such a manner as to undermine the moral basis of the right of people, because they are people, to have some important say in the setting of their own course and in the use of their own faculties. Other forms of government may similarly fail to respect human independence. But there is at least no contradiction in that; the underlying assumption of every kind of government by wisers and betters is that people on the whole are not fit to manage their own affairs, but must have someone else do it for them, and there is no paradox when such a government treats its subjects without respect, or deals with them on the basis of their having no rights that the government must take into account. 　　But democracy affirms that people are fit to control themselves, and it cannot live in the same air with the theory that there is no limit to the extent to which public power--even the power of a majority--can interfere with the lives of people. 　　Rational limitation on power is therefore not a contradiction to democracy, but is of the very essence of democracy as such. Other sorts of government may impose such limitations on themselves as an act of grace. Democracy is under the moral duty of limiting itself because such limitation is essential to the survival of that respect for humankind which is in the foundations of democracy. Respect for the freedom of all people cannot, of course, be the only guide, for there would then be no government. Delicate ongoing compromise is what must be looked for. But democracy, unless it is to deny its own moral basis, must accept the necessity for making this compromise and for giving real weight to the claims of those without the presently effective political power to make their claims prevail in elections By "the prose of democracy" ( Par. 1 ) the author most probably means its

A:popular interpretation. B:actual operation. C:ongoing compromise. D:rational limitation.

The classic difficulty felt with democracy arises from the fact that democracy can never express the will of the whole people because there never exists any such unchanging will (at least in any society that call itself democratic). The concept of government of the whole people by the whole people must be looked on as being in the poetry rather than in the prose of democracy; the fact of prose is that real democracy means government by some kind of dominant majority. 　　And the ever-present danger, repeatedly realized in fact, is that this dominant majority may behave toward those who are not of the majority in such a manner as to undermine the moral basis of the right of people, because they are people, to have some important say in the setting of their own course and in the use of their own faculties. Other forms of government may similarly fail to respect human independence. But there is at least no contradiction in that; the underlying assumption of every kind of government by wisers and betters is that people on the whole are not fit to manage their own affairs, but must have someone else do it for them, and there is no paradox when such a government treats its subjects without respect, or deals with them on the basis of their having no rights that the government must take into account. 　　But democracy affirms that people are fit to control themselves, and it cannot live in the same air with the theory that there is no limit to the extent to which public power--even the power of a majority--can interfere with the lives of people. 　　Rational limitation on power is therefore not a contradiction to democracy, but is of the very essence of democracy as such. Other sorts of government may impose such limitations on themselves as an act of grace. Democracy is under the moral duty of limiting itself because such limitation is essential to the survival of that respect for humankind which is in the foundations of democracy. Respect for the freedom of all people cannot, of course, be the only guide, for there would then be no government. Delicate ongoing compromise is what must be looked for. But democracy, unless it is to deny its own moral basis, must accept the necessity for making this compromise and for giving real weight to the claims of those without the presently effective political power to make their claims prevail in elections By "the prose of democracy" ( Par. 1 ) the author most probably means its

A:popular interpretation. B:actual operation. C:ongoing compromise. D:rational limitation.

rational