The Ethics of Ambiguity; Quiz

Take our free The Ethics of Ambiguity; quiz below, with 25 multiple choice questions that help you test your knowledge. Determine which chapters, themes and styles you already know and what you need to study for your upcoming essay, midterm, or final exam. Take the free quiz now!

How do ethics of ambiguity avoid being solipsistic? (from Chapter 3, The Positive Aspect of Ambiguity, Sections 4-5, The Present and the Future, Ambiguity and Conclusion)

By the fact that the individual is defined only by his relationship to the world and other individuals.

Because it demands that individuals engage matter in the pursuit of projects.

Because goals often transcend the life of the individual who initiates them.

Because the means of an end often affect more individual than the achievement of the end itself.

How does Beauvoir claim an individual can prevent life from being defined as an escape toward nothingness? (from Chapter 3, The Positive Aspect of Ambiguity, Sections 4-5, The Present and the Future, Ambiguity and Conclusion)

Existence must be asserted in the present.

Impossible or utopian goals must not be set.

Projects must be taken in consideration of their consequences.

All goals must consider the ambiguity of all life.

To what does Beauvoir compare the presence of freedom within the drama of choice? (from Chapter 2, Personal Freedom and Others)

The calm before the storm.

The adolescent who sees the world constructed for him as a child is corrupt.

The arbitrariness of the grace distributed by God in Calvinistic Doctrine.

The historian who chooses threads that take him to the original cause.

What does Beauvoir claim to be the violence committed by opponents to the Nazi occupation of France. (from Chapter 3, The Positive Aspect of Ambiguity, Sections 4-5, The Present and the Future, Ambiguity and Conclusion)

To inspire the nation to overthrow the occupation.

To chase out their German occupiers.

To create a state of violence that made collaboration impossible.

To defeat the German military.

What example does Beauvoir use to illustrate "The Antinomies of Action"? (from Chapter 3, The Positive Aspect of Ambiguity, Sections 1-3, The Aesthetic Attitude, Freedom and Liberation, The Antinomies of Action)

Men who commit violence against an oppressor for the cause of freedom become oppressors themselves and must reduce the oppressor as a thing to be removed.

If those who lead actions against oppression are not under continual scrutiny, they will plan insurrections for their own benefit.

That the thinkers who can define the evils of oppression actually become oppressors by making people realize their plight but offering no action to correct it.

That unwise action against oppressors taken without considering the future will lead to more vicious oppression by opportunists.