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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. What comes of the man of action who does not recognize the ambiguity that appears during the pursuit of his goal, according to Beauvoir?
(a) He can become a dictator.
(b) He will lose his ability to evaluate his choices.
(c) He will lose sight of his goal.
(d) He will fall victim to the oppression he is fighting.

2. How does the type of future facing individual humans affect civilizations such as Ancient Greece and Rome, according to Beauvoir?
(a) They all survive by effectively winning wars.
(b) Their future is secured by eradicating the future of their enemies.
(c) They all come to an end.
(d) They make their futures more secure by seeking to provide freedom to their citizens.

3. How do ethics of ambiguity avoid being solipsistic?
(a) By the fact that the individual is defined only by his relationship to the world and other individuals.
(b) Because it demands that individuals engage matter in the pursuit of projects.
(c) Because goals often transcend the life of the individual who initiates them.
(d) Because the means of an end often affect more individual than the achievement of the end itself.

4. How does Beauvoir explain that the serious man becomes a dangerous tyrant?
(a) His ultimate goal is always to exert power over other people and usurp their freedom to his purposes.
(b) The consequences of his choices to devote himself to his goal requires that he direct the choices of those around him.
(c) His choice to reject the ambiguity of his freedom combined with the desire to achieve his goal drives him to subject those in his environment to nothing more than instruments of achievement.
(d) He ignores the subjectivity of his choice and sacrifices the freedom of others to achieve his goals.

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

Short Answer Questions

1. How does Beauvoir compare Marxism to existentialism?

2. What is the illustration Beauvoir uses to prove her assertion of stubbornness in the face of impossibility?

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

4. What are the two clans that Beauvoir claims to come from oppression?

5. What does Beauvoir claim to be the choice that comes to a young man after a long crisis?

(see the answer key)

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