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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. What claim of existentialists does Beauvoir offer in defense of detractors to existentialism?
(a) Bouvoir claims that existentialists believe that the world is willed by man, insofar as his will expresses his genuine reality.
(b) Bouvoir claims that existentialists give focus to the importance of matter in reality.
(c) Bouvoir claims that existentialists help to accentuate the strengths of other theories.
(d) Bouvoir claims that existentialists offer their detractors important challenges to prove their theories.

2. What is a principle that Beauvoir states that an ethics of ambiguity will refuse to deny a priori?
(a) That separate existants can be bound to each other, such as individual freedoms can forge laws valid for all.
(b) That "ethics of ambiguity" are as solipsistic as is existentialism.
(c) That, by definition, "ethics of ambiguity" must remained undefined.
(d) That the most important element of "ethics of ambiguity" is to disallow them from defining the conduct of those outside their understanding.

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

4. 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 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.
(c) She explained that Adalai Stevenson believed his intellectualism would over come Dwight Eisenhower's popular reputation in two presidential elections.
(d) 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.

5. What does Beauvoir claim to be the relationship between the serious and nihilism?
(a) The serious man often rallies to a partial nihilism, denying everything which is not its object.
(b) Seriousness and nihilism both develop a narrow set of ethics based upon a relationship to achievement or lack of the same.
(c) Seriousness and nihilism focus on goals or the impossibility of reaching them to avoid accepting the freedom of ambiguity.
(d) The serious man and nihilists dispute the purpose of those who do not support their goals.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Beauvoir require for an individual to genuinely desire an end in the present?

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

3. What does Beauvoir identify as the irony of the serious man?

4. What is the point at which existentialism is opposed to dialectic materialism according to Beauvoir?

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

(see the answer key)

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