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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. To what conclusion to Beauvoir arrive regarding Sartre's internal choices that are affected by personal passions?
(a) Since Sartre considers man as driven by internal passions, he brings to question the existence of the physical world and its causes and effects.
(b) Sartre's man eliminates the needs for external moral influence by following passions that eventually lead to personal benefit.
(c) Since man is directed by his eternal passions, the external force of God has no influence in Sartre's existentialism.
(d) Since passions and their choices are internal, there are no objective standards by which to define their usefulness.

2. When an individual aims at a goal that will be achieved beyond his own death, what does Beauvoir claim the individual should expect from the time given to the goal?
(a) The individual should expect those who share his vision accept his means.
(b) The individual should expect his virtues to be challenged through his effort.
(c) The individual should not expect anything of that time for which he worked.
(d) The individual should expect a festival be given in his honor.

3. What are the four items that Beauvoir identifies as the "indefinite conquests of existence over being"?
(a) Aesthetics, ambiguity, freedom, and oppression.
(b) Science, technics, art, and philosophy.
(c) Past, present, future, and projects.
(d) Time, space, matter, and thought.

4. In what way does Beauvoir consider nihilistic thinking to be right?
(a) In realizing that peace is punctuated by oppression and revolution.
(b) In understanding the future will be marked by violence.
(c) In thinking that the world possesses no justification and that he himself is nothing.
(d) In understanding the obstacles that come from a complex world.

5. What contradiction does Beauvoir suggest will come to those who fight for a cause due to the complexity of the world?
(a) In order to win an urgent victory, one may be brought to leaving a valued friend.
(b) In order to win an urgent victory, one may be brought to sacrifice his principles.
(c) In order to win an urgent victory, one may be brought to face a humiliating defeat.
(d) In order to win an urgent victory, one may be brought to the point of fighting against valid causes.

Short Answer Questions

1. What relationship does Beauvoir identify between ethics and facticity?

2. What quote from Saint-Just does Beauvoir use to point out the paradox to the fight for freedom?

3. Beauvoir claims that critics of existentialism claim that it is solipsistic. What is solipsism?

4. Why does Beauvoir claim one cannot assert that everything may be the object of contemplation?

5. How do ethics of ambiguity avoid being solipsistic?

(see the answer key)

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