This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Chapter 3, The Positive Aspect of Ambiguity, Sections 4-5, The Present and the Future, Ambiguity and Conclusion.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does Beauvoir claim is revealed through art?
(a) Art reveals the aesthetic qualities of the will of freedom.
(b) Art reveals that aesthetic contemplation at some point must make contact with time and space.
(c) Art reveals the transitory as an absolute.
(d) Art reveals that ambiguous principles of truth and beauty can occupy time and space.

2. How does Beauvoir claim that "The Ethics of Ambiguity" compare to the individualism of Christian ethics?
(a) Christian ethics dispenses salvation to the individual as the Ethics of Ambiguity depends on the individual accepting the nature of their ambiguity.
(b) Both Christian ethics and the Ethics of Ambiguity have their greatest influence on individual practice.
(c) Both Christian ethics and the Ethics of Ambiguity depend upon individual devotion.
(d) Christian salvation is provided by an individual source as are the Ethics of Ambiguity.

3. What is the point at which existentialism is opposed to dialectic materialism according to Beauvoir?
(a) Where subjectivity and objectivity become equally determined by the revolt of the proletariat.
(b) When the proletariat universally works to eliminate its class.
(c) Where intellectual and bourgeois revolutions are considered suspiciously by the proletariat.
(d) Where revolt, need, hope, rejection, and desire are only the resultants of external forces.

4. 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 can escape the stress of his existence or throw himself into the object that defines his goal.
(c) 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.
(d) He can accept his ambiguity and move to freedom and ethics, or he can return to the shelters of his childhood.

5. What is a flaw that Beauvoir claims some people make about their present situation regarding the natures of human nature and the present?
(a) Since no one can fully occupy the present, many obsess on either the past or on future things.
(b) Some serenely believe that the future is in the hands of a benevolent God, therefore they pursue no worthwhile projects in the present.
(c) Some believe that since the present conflicts with the nature of thought, that morality has no purpose.
(d) Some serenely think that the present oppression has no importance, and that oppression will be wiped out by itself.