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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. Who does Beauvoir use as an example of moving through such obstacles?
(a) Hitler.
(b) Adalai Stevenson.
(c) Vincent Van Gogh.
(d) Sisyphus.

2. How does Beauvoir claim that Marxists consider man's actions to be valid?
(a) Only if the actions are in opposition of the bourgeois.
(b) Only if the man has not helped initiate his action by an internal movement or through free will.
(c) Only if the actions eliminate private property.
(d) Only if the actions support the revolution of the proletariat.

3. By quoting Dostoyevsky ("If God does not exist, then everything is permitted"), what examination does Beauvoir make?
(a) The role of an external moral code in extinguishing passions.
(b) The role of a dualistic spiritual existence in directing passion.
(c) The role of the physical world on the development of a moral code.
(d) The role of the existence of God in defining the existence of man and the world.

4. What is the illustration Beauvoir uses to prove her assertion of stubbornness in the face of impossibility?
(a) The development of the airplane.
(b) The sapling that grows through a sidewalk.
(c) Beating her fist upon a stone.
(d) The deaths that preceded the first successful climb of Mt. Everest.

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) It has a diminished affect as time and spontaneous acts have different consequences.
(d) The act remains as an experience that lends to the development of the will.

Short Answer Questions

1. How does Beauvoir compare Marxism to existentialism?

2. What is the paradox with which Beauvoir closes Chapter One?

3. What does Beauvoir claim comes, "...between the past which no longer is and the future which is not yet,..."?

4. How does Beauvoir show how her example of moving through obstacles prove her arguments?

5. What is a principle that Beauvoir states that an ethics of ambiguity will refuse to deny a priori?

(see the answer key)

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