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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 show how her example of moving through obstacles prove her arguments?
(a) She asserted that Van Gogh, despite being institutionalized, integrated his his past as a painter and continued to communicate through his talent.
(b) 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.
(c) She explained that Adalai Stevenson believed his intellectualism would over come Dwight Eisenhower's popular reputation in two presidential elections.
(d) 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.

2. What are the four items that Beauvoir identifies as the "indefinite conquests of existence over being"?
(a) Aesthetics, ambiguity, freedom, and oppression.
(b) Past, present, future, and projects.
(c) Science, technics, art, and philosophy.
(d) Time, space, matter, and thought.

3. How does Beauvoir claim that the child develops the conviction of good and evil?
(a) Through pain and healing.
(b) Through observation and learning.
(c) Through punishments, prizes, words of praise or blame.
(d) Through joy and disappointment.

4. What does Beauvoir claim matters to the serious man?
(a) Using his ambiguity to shape his ethics.
(b) Being able to lose himself in the nature of the object which he prefers to himself.
(c) Subjecting himself to the project that defines his ambiguity to himself.
(d) Setting a track to achieve a predetermined goal.

5. How does the "sub-man" submerge his freedom, according to Beauvoir?
(a) He ignores the ambiguity of his existence.
(b) He avoids actions that have consequences.
(c) He refuses subjectivity in favor of predictability.
(d) He accepts the ethics and expectations of society.

Short Answer Questions

1. How does Beauvoir identify dualism?

2. What explanation does Beauvoir give to assert that existentialist thought helps to build community.

3. What does Beauvoir identify as the paradox of Marxist thought?

4. At what time does Beauvoir suggest that children begin to notice the contradictions, hesitations and weaknesses of adults?

5. How does Beauvoir explain that an individual might be responsible for what they accept, but not guilty for acting upon it?

(see the answer key)

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