English Language Learners Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for speakers of other languages learning English. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
This reflects deep tensions within the secular variant of the workmanship ideal itself: it presses relentlessly toward a kind of moral determinism that its very terms suggest we ought to be able to deny
The Moral Foundations of Politics by Ian Shapiro.
My question is about the word deny. What we ought to be able to deny? Does author mean this some way?
"Moral determinism"
The clause "its very terms suggest" is describing why or how we ought to be able to deny, but it could be omitted and the sentence would still make sense:
"it presses...toward...moral determinism that...we ought to be able to deny"
