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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What irony does Beauvoir suggest contributes to the most optimistic ethics.
(a) That they have all begun by emphasizing the element of failure involved in the condition of man.
(b) That although ethics are pursued to define man's existence, they always lead to ambiguity.
(c) That all ethics eventually lead man to rationalize violations of their ethics.
(d) That although they seek to lift man to utopia, the eventually lead man to distopia.

2. What does Beauvoir claim can come to people who are filled with the horror of defeat?
(a) They would keep themselves from ever doing anything.
(b) The face the transcendent moment at which they must face failure or freedom to act.
(c) They must go back to their most recent success to retrace the steps of purpose.
(d) They reach the need to recall experience to make purpose of life.

3. To what conclusion to Beauvoir arrive regarding Sartre's internal choices that are affected by personal passions?
(a) Sartre's man eliminates the needs for external moral influence by following passions that eventually lead to personal benefit.
(b) Since man is directed by his eternal passions, the external force of God has no influence in Sartre's existentialism.
(c) Since passions and their choices are internal, there are no objective standards by which to define their usefulness.
(d) Since Sartre considers man as driven by internal passions, he brings to question the existence of the physical world and its causes and effects.

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?
(a) To discontinue to attempt to keep up with the changes going on in the world.
(b) To accept the insignificance of the individual as a means of embracing individual ambiguity.
(c) To assume and know the condition of our fundamental ambiguity.
(d) To seek to understand God's role in the growing environment of violence.

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

Short Answer Questions

1. How does Beauvoir explain what Descartes meant when he said that the freedom of man is infinite, but this power is limited?

2. How does Beauvoir compare Marxism to existentialism?

3. How does Beauvoir claim that a spontaneous action, or flight, can be converted into will?

4. What idea regarding ethics does Beauvoir attribute to Hegel?

5. How does Beauvoir consider stubbornness in the face of an obstacle that is impossible to overcome?

(see the answer key)

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