View a FREE sample

This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Chapter 1, Ambiguity and Freedom.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What prevents a moral question from presenting itself to the child according to Beauvoir?
(a) The misunderstanding of spontaneity and affects.
(b) A lack of perspective to see himself in the past or seeing himself in the future.
(c) Ignorance of consequences.
(d) Ignorance of the physical world.

2. Beauvoir claims that critics of existentialism claim that it is solipsistic. What is solipsism?
(a) The theory that only the self (mind) exists or can be proven to exist.
(b) The theory that only the physical life exists and matter is eternal.
(c) The theory that life is replicated on many planets in many worlds.
(d) The theory that life is nothing more than a creation in the mind of God.

3. How does Beauvoir explain that the Marxist paradox lends to her theory the scheme of man is ambiguous?
(a) She agrees that, "One even the most devoted proletariat has what he needs, he begins feeding his desires."
(b) She points out that , "He wants to be, and to the extent that the coincides with this wish, he fails."
(c) She shows that, "Morality is based on denial, while work and labor is based upon acquisition."
(d) She suggests that, although, "Marxists deride traditional moral codes that forbid theft and adultery as being 'bourgeois', she points out that strict adherence to Marxist dogma is a moral imperative for revolution."

4. How does Beauvoir suggest a past accomplishment can be made relevant in the present?
(a) By ceaselessly returning to it and justify it as part of the project with which the individual is currently involved.
(b) By comparing present acts to the acts of the past.
(c) By tracing the affects of the act from the past through to the present.
(d) By keeping a record of all accomplishments to reflect upon those experiences with every decision.

5. What does Beauvoir claim comes of an accomplished act that is left behind by an individual?
(a) It becomes nothing more than a fact.
(b) The affects of the act continue, but the act becomes forgotten.
(c) The act remains as an experience that lends to the development of the will.
(d) It has a diminished affect as time and spontaneous acts have different consequences.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Beauvoir claim can come to people who are filled with the horror of defeat?

2. Although Beauvoir reports that existentialism defined itself as a philosophy of ambiguity, what does she claim to be existentialism's fundamental flaw?

3. Beauvoir claims that dualists use their basic belief to establish what idea?

4. In the face of emerging violence of man's growing mastery of the world, what does Beauvoir suggest to individuals who seek to navigate it?

5. What is the point at which existentialism is opposed to dialectic materialism according to Beauvoir?

(see the answer key)

This section contains 673 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample