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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. 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 existence of God in defining the existence of man and the world.
(d) The role of the physical world on the development of a moral code.

2. What does Beauvoir identify as the paradox of Marxist thought?
(a) "Marxist deny desires for material things while devoting their revolution to taking material things."
(b) "Marxist deny accepting morality while condemning all movements that do not accept their moral view."
(c) "From the moment a man recognizes himself as free, he is prohibited from wishing for anything."
(d) "The point at which the proletariat overthrows the bourgeois, they immediately attempt to become bourgeois."

3. How does Beauvoir explain what Descartes meant when he said that the freedom of man is infinite, but this power is limited?
(a) That the will is defined only by raising obstacles and by the contingency of certain obstacles that let themselves be conquered and others that do not.
(b) The individual man has the power to follow his desires until his pursuit is obstructed by a more power man.
(c) That man's mind has no limits in thought, but his physical body does not have the ability to follow the thoughts.
(d) That man is free to believe all things, but achieving them is subject to the physical universe.

4. To what does Beauvoir compare the "sub-man"?
(a) An unpublished writer.
(b) A common laborer.
(c) A bad painter.
(d) A dull book.

5. What does Beauvoir claim a child can do due to his state of security?
(a) He can create the world he wants to exist.
(b) He can do with impunity whatever he likes.
(c) He can have all his needs provided without labor.
(d) He can choose a direction in which he desires to remove his ignorance.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Beauvoir identify as the certain truth contained in the nihilist attitude?

2. What does Descartes credit man's unhappiness to, according to Beauvoir?

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

4. How does Beauvoir explain that Marxists perceive that acts can be regarded as good or bad?

5. What type of individual does Beauvoir claim adopts the Aesthetic Attitude?

(see the answer key)

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