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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Chapter 2, Personal Freedom and Others.

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 the physical world on the development of a moral code.
(b) The role of an external moral code in extinguishing passions.
(c) The role of a dualistic spiritual existence in directing passion.
(d) The role of the existence of God in defining the existence of man and the world.

2. During their stage of freedom, how does Beauvoir claim that a child sees adults?
(a) As physically threatening.
(b) As divinities.
(c) As benevolent dictators that provide their needs.
(d) As fanciful projections of their uninhibited minds.

3. What does Beauvoir claim to be the choice that comes to a young man after a long crisis?
(a) He can define his life through his choices, or avoid his choices and slip into nothingness.
(b) He either turns back toward the world of his parents and teachers or he adheres to the values which are new but seem to him just as sure.
(c) He can accept his ambiguity and move to freedom and ethics, or he can return to the shelters of his childhood.
(d) He can escape the stress of his existence or throw himself into the object that defines his goal.

4. According to Beauvoir, what is the goal of dualist teachings to their disciples?
(a) To eliminate ambiguity from the after life.
(b) To escape ambiguity.
(c) To see the physical life as ambiguous.
(d) To eliminate ambiguity from extraterrestrial life.

5. Upon what does Beauvoir claim that a child's freedom is based?
(a) Upon ignorance that makes all his decisions meaningless.
(b) Upon his willingness to trust adults without question.
(c) Upon adults whom he is only to respect and obey.
(d) Upon his inability to grasp the concept of cause and effect.

Short Answer Questions

1. In what way does Beauvoir consider nihilistic thinking to be right?

2. To what does Beauvoir compare the presence of freedom within the drama of choice?

3. What does Beauvoir report comes to the individual at the time the world changes in his perspective?

4. 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?

5. How does Beauvoir explain how the passionate man different from the adventurer man?

(see the answer key)

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