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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. Although Beauvoir reports that existentialism defined itself as a philosophy of ambiguity, what does she claim to be existentialism's fundamental flaw?
(a) It is incapable of furnishing any principle for making choices.
(b) Its true ambiguity is superficial since it has no moral code.
(c) It is so deeply ambiguous that its true understanding cannot be achieved.
(d) Existentialism is essentially taken by individuals seeking to pursue what is normally antisocial and contributes to the violence of mastery of nature.

2. What does Beauvoir identify as the irony of the serious man?
(a) He pursues his serious goals but finds them to be insufficient once they are achieved.
(b) He considers his goals to be serious whereas the free man considers them to be trivial.
(c) He defends the seriousness of his goals while disputing the seriousness of the goals of others.
(d) He claims that he freely chose his goals, but they are extensions of the structures that formed his childhood.

3. At what point does Beauvoir claim an individual has the ability to decide and choose?
(a) When the usefulness of spontaneous acts are identifiable by the individual.
(b) When he can see and manipulate the affects of spontaneous acts on the physical world.
(c) When the moments of his life begin to be organized into behavior.
(d) When he responds to the consequences of spontaneous acts.

4. How does Beauvoir characterize the purpose of the body?
(a) It becomes the vessel that evaluates the harm or benefit of consequences.
(b) It expresses our relationship to the world.
(c) It enjoys the pleasures of freedom before consequences are manifest.
(d) It becomes the barometer that marks the move from child to adolescent to mature adult.

5. What does Beauvoir identify as the spirit of seriousness?
(a) To consider values as ready-made things.
(b) Leaving the fallacy of existentialism that only thought matters.
(c) Leaving the fallacy of materialists that only matter matters.
(d) Facing the reality that the fate of all is the grave.

Short Answer Questions

1. How does Beauvoir explain what Descartes meant when he said that the freedom of man is infinite, but this power is limited?

2. To what conclusion to Beauvoir arrive regarding Sartre's internal choices that are affected by personal passions?

3. How does Beauvoir explain that a child, himself, is not serious?

4. By quoting Dostoyevsky ("If God does not exist, then everything is permitted"), what examination does Beauvoir make?

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

(see the answer key)

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