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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. Of what does Beauvoir accuse political parties in their effort to control the ambiguity of the human condition?
(a) Glorifying war.
(b) Creating conflicts.
(c) Abuse of language.
(d) Making contradictory statements to appeal to all people.

2. How is Beauvoir asking each one to confirm their existence through the ethics of ambiguity?
(a) By the transcendence of goals.
(b) By combining mind to matter through projects.
(c) As a value for all others.
(d) As a means to an end.

3. Why does Beauvoir suggest that the idea of the ambiguity of existence should not be considered absurd?
(a) Because to consider the ambiguity of existence absurd is to shut down debate that can define human existence.
(b) Because to consider the ambiguity of existence as absurd is, itself, absurd.
(c) Because clinging to labeling challenging ideas as absurd only limits intellectual investigation.
(d) Because to consider the idea that human existence is ambiguous is to deny that human existence can ever be given a meaning.

4. What does Beauvoir suggest becomes the intellectual responsibility of existentialists who reject God?
(a) He bears the responsibility to show his works for self-benefit do not affect others in his environs.
(b) He bears the responsibility to prove the lives of others have not affects on himself, starting with the union of his parents that brought his existence.
(c) He has the responsibility of defining how works for self-benefit are also beneficial to his environs.
(d) He bears responsibility for a world which is not the work of strange power.

5. How does Beauvoir compare southern slaves to children?
(a) By comparing their obedience to the slave owner to that of children to adults in their lives.
(b) By comparing hopes for freedom to the a child's hope for the future.
(c) By comparing their faith in a heavenly afterlife to the fantasy world that children create in their minds.
(d) By comparing the ignorance of their condition to the ignorance of children to the realities of the world.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Beauvoir claim to be the basis upon which a man decides upon what he wants to be?

2. In what way does Beauvoir claim that "The Ethics of Ambiguity" is individualistic?

3. What quote from Lenin does Beauvoir use to demonstrate the Marxist revolution has human meaning?

4. Why does Beauvoir suggest that if man waits for universal peace to establish his existence validly, he will wait indefinitely?

5. What example does Beauvoir use to illustrate "...festivals (that) stop the movement of transcendence?"

(see the answer key)

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