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

2. For whom do Beauvoir and Marx agree that the cause of freedom is most urgent?
(a) To the oppressed that it appears as immediately necessary.
(b) Women who are unaware of the subjugation to men.
(c) The unenlightened who does not realize their exploitation.
(d) The proletariat who is controlled by the bourgeois.

3. What are the two meanings that Beauvoir gives to the word future.
(a) It is the ambiguous condition of man which is lack of being as well as man's existence.
(b) The future is never here, but man is always moving toward it.
(c) Future is both a speculation and a target.
(d) Future is that which is yet to come, but is the substance of all projects.

4. How does Beauvoir bring into question the Marxist claim that pure proletariat revolution is generated by the proletariat class?
(a) A proletariat revolution is too often halted by various conditions in various locations.
(b) Too often members of the proletariat seek to become bourgeois.
(c) The Proletariat can be influenced by materialistic gain.
(d) That even a Marxist needs to make a personal decision to join one party or another.

5. What idea regarding ethics does Beauvoir attribute to Hegel?
(a) "Ethics are the creation of minds that fear facing problems."
(b) "There is an ethics only if there is a problem to solve."
(c) "Ethics is irrelevant because they only affect manipulation of a material universe."
(d) "Ethics is self-contained because reality is self-contained."

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Beauvoir report comes to the individual at the time the world changes in his perspective?

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

3. How does Beauvoir compare the present to the future?

4. How does Beauvoir characterize the fate of the "sub-man"?

5. In what way does Beauvoir consider nihilistic thinking to be right?

(see the answer key)

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