This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Chapter 3, The Positive Aspect of Ambiguity, Sections 1-3, The Aesthetic Attitude, Freedom and Liberation, The Antinomies of Action.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. At what time does Beauvoir suggest that children begin to notice the contradictions, hesitations and weaknesses of adults?
(a) The age of accountability.
(b) At the time the become interested in the opposite sex.
(c) Adolescence.
(d) When they begin to see how their actions affect the world around them.

2. What does Beauvoir report to be the child's situation?
(a) His ambiguity is compounded by his ignorance of right and wrong.
(b) He is cast into a universe which he has not helped to establish and appears as an absolute to which he can only submit.
(c) He faces the reality that his freedom is continually reduced by his growing knowledge.
(d) He is subject to accept all things based upon what others tell him.

3. When does Beauvoir claim that science acquires meaning?
(a) When science explains material properties of present conditions.
(b) When science can cross the boundaries of the physical to the aesthetic.
(c) When scientific processes prove phenomena that transcend time.
(d) When it is seen as a movement toward freedom.

4. How does Beauvoir show how her example of moving through obstacles prove her arguments?
(a) She explained that Sisyphus was condemned to rolling the boulder up the mountain despite his the fact that it would roll back down once he got it to the top.
(b) She explained that Adalai Stevenson believed his intellectualism would over come Dwight Eisenhower's popular reputation in two presidential elections.
(c) She pointed out that Hitler had desires to rule the world in spite of the fact that he did not have the ability to take his navy outside of the North Sea.
(d) She asserted that Van Gogh, despite being institutionalized, integrated his his past as a painter and continued to communicate through his talent.

5. How does Beauvoir characterize the response of Western women when the structures that shelter them seem to be in danger?
(a) They become confused and bewildered to the point of despair.
(b) They become harder, more bitter and even more furious or cruel than their masters.
(c) They become detached and unemotional.
(d) They drive themselves further into the subjection that makes them child like.