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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 claim to protect the child from the risk of existence?
(a) His obedience to adults.
(b) His budding existentialist belief that only thoughts matter.
(c) His inability to comprehend the consequences of decisions.
(d) The ceiling which human generations have built over his head.

2. In what way does Beauvoir claim that "The Ethics of Ambiguity" is individualistic?
(a) By allowing the individual to withdraw from social life to gain moral perspective.
(b) In that it comes to the individual to choose to follow them.
(c) It accords the individual absolute value and recognizes him as the power of laying the foundations of his own existence.
(d) It provides the individual the reasoning to choose between being free or being serious.

3. How does Beauvoir claim an individual can prevent life from being defined as an escape toward nothingness?
(a) All goals must consider the ambiguity of all life.
(b) Existence must be asserted in the present.
(c) Impossible or utopian goals must not be set.
(d) Projects must be taken in consideration of their consequences.

4. How does Beauvoir define the relationship of the "sub-man" to ethics and facticity?
(a) The "sub-man" rejects the ambiguity of ethics as influences over his facticity.
(b) The "sub-man" accepts ethics as the facticity of his existence as unchangeable.
(c) The "sub-man" considers ethics and facticity as interchangeable.
(d) The "sub-man" rejects ethics and feels only the facticity of his existence.

5. What does Beauvoir seek to prove regarding man's mastery of the world?
(a) Man's journey to master the world is a quest to meet God.
(b) With each gain to control his surroundings, man feels himself more insignificant within the immense collectivity on the earth.
(c) Man's mastery of the world is futile, because nature is constantly changing beyond man's ability to contain it.
(d) That the more widespread men attain mastery of the world, the more they find themselves crushed by it.

Short Answer Questions

1. How does Beauvoir suggest a past accomplishment can be made relevant in the present?

2. How does Beauvoir suggest that the ends can justify the means.

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

4. How does Beauvoir show how her example of moving through obstacles prove her arguments?

5. What does Beauvoir claim defines the "sub-man"?

(see the answer key)

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