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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. How does Beauvoir explain that technics (technology) is not objectively justified?
(a) Technics depends on science for its gains, but science only has purpose when it can transcend time.
(b) Technics can have significant benefit for projects in the present, but too often it fuels the desire to accept the Aesthetic Attitude.
(c) Technics makes the absolute goal of saving time and work of life, but life only gains meaning when time and work are spent.
(d) Technics too often aims at expanding freedom, but ends up causing individuals to be absorbed into the seriousness of projects.

2. What does Beauvoir claim to be the affect of rejecting any extrinsic justification for internal choices?
(a) Such rejection would lead to the erosion of any social order that makes choice useful.
(b) Such rejection would also reject the original pessimism which she seeks to address with her work.
(c) Such rejection also eliminates any standard by which choices are determined to be useful.
(d) Such rejection also removes the motivations upon passions are fueled.

3. How does Beauvoir explain how goals supplant freedom in the life of the serious man?
(a) The serious man is defined by his goal not by his choices or acts.
(b) Goals become the means of defining the existence of the serious man at the cost of freedom and individually defining his ethics.
(c) Rather than finding freedom in choosing goals, the serious man chooses goals to avoid his freedom.
(d) The serious man rejects all independent thought for the sake of achieving his goal.

4. What does Beauvoir indicate can sometimes happen when there is a failure of the serious?
(a) It can bring about a radical disorder.
(b) Sometimes the serious man will revert to his childhood and depend on others for his purpose.
(c) Sometimes the serious man will recognize his ambiguity and act freely to establish an ethic to help him through his failure.
(d) The serious man will have to rely on what training he had as a child to deal with failure.

5. How will an oppressor use history to justify his oppression, according to Beauvoir?
(a) He will point out only past actions of his benevolence.
(b) He will subjectively use the past to justify his power.
(c) He will create new history to confuse his enemies.
(d) He will negative aspects of history that existed before his power was attained.

Short Answer Questions

1. 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?

2. When does Beauvoir claim that science acquires meaning?

3. According to Beauvoir, what stops an individual's life from appearing as a negligible thing?

4. How does Beauvoir characterize the fate of the "sub-man"?

5. How does Beauvoir characterize the response of Western women when the structures that shelter them seem to be in danger?

(see the answer key)

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