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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. Beauvoir claims that dualists use their basic belief to establish what idea?
(a) To seek to find life on other planets.
(b) To diminish the part of the self that cannot be saved.
(c) To embrace nihilism.
(d) To guide their adherents to prepare exclusively for the after life.

2. How does Beauvoir suggest a child has a state of security?
(a) By virtue of the adults who control his life.
(b) By virtue of his hopes for the future.
(c) By virtue of his very insignificance.
(d) By virtue of the fantasy world he creates in his mind.

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

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

5. What does Beauvoir report comes to the individual at the time the world changes in his perspective?
(a) He has the moment of moral choice.
(b) He faces the choice of repeating past mistakes or breaking from them.
(c) The world is no longer ready made.
(d) He can begin to control the consequences of his acts.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Beauvoir claim comes, "...between the past which no longer is and the future which is not yet,..."?

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

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

4. How does Beauvoir compare southern slaves to children?

5. Although Beauvoir reports that existentialism defined itself as a philosophy of ambiguity, what does she claim to be existentialism's fundamental flaw?

(see the answer key)

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