CAT 2025 Slot 2 VARC Question & Solution
Question
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) ____.
Options
Solution
Why the Sentence Fits Best at Blank (3)
The paragraph explains Denneny’s choice to highlight the concept of “taste” rather than “judgment.” His aim is to draw attention to a key period in aesthetic and philosophical history that is usually overlooked.
How the Paragraph Progresses
- It first notes that Denneny identifies a largely forgotten historical shift.
- Then it describes how, in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, taste evolved from a literal physical sense to a significant philosophical idea in aesthetics and ethics.
- After that, the paragraph turns to explaining how mapping this evolution helps uncover neglected thinkers and theories.
Why Blank (3) Is the Best Fit
The missing sentence explains that although “taste” was sometimes treated as equivalent to “judgment,” it still retained its ties to pleasure, the body, and personal experience—features that later theories often ignored.
This idea extends the discussion about the expansion of ‘taste’ and explains why it mattered. By blank (3), the paragraph has already:
- described the historical growth of the concept, and
- established its emerging philosophical importance.
So the missing sentence naturally continues that thought.
Why Other Blanks Don’t Work
- Blank (1) — too early; the paragraph hasn’t yet described the evolution of taste.
- Blank (2) — disrupts the transition from Denneny’s motivation to the broader historical context.
- Blank (4) — the paragraph has already shifted to Denneny’s method and the recovery of overlooked thinkers, so inserting a distinction between taste and judgment here would feel misplaced.
Final Takeaway
Blank (3) aligns with the logical flow: it builds on the historical expansion of taste and clarifies its philosophical relevance before the paragraph moves on to later arguments.