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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Chapter 1, Ambiguity and Freedom.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. How does Beauvoir claim that a spontaneous action, or flight, can be converted into will?
(a) By accepting the consequences of the spontaneous act.
(b) By recognizing the effects of the spontaneous act on the physical world.
(c) By assuming the project positively.
(d) By evaluating the usefulness of the spontaneous act.

2. What does Beauvoir claim to be the affect of rejecting any extrinsic justification for internal choices?
(a) Such rejection would also reject the original pessimism which she seeks to address with her work.
(b) Such rejection also eliminates any standard by which choices are determined to be useful.
(c) Such rejection also removes the motivations upon passions are fueled.
(d) Such rejection would lead to the erosion of any social order that makes choice useful.

3. What does Beauvoir identify as the paradox of Marxist thought?
(a) "From the moment a man recognizes himself as free, he is prohibited from wishing for anything."
(b) "Marxist deny accepting morality while condemning all movements that do not accept their moral view."
(c) "The point at which the proletariat overthrows the bourgeois, they immediately attempt to become bourgeois."
(d) "Marxist deny desires for material things while devoting their revolution to taking material things."

4. What role does time play what Beauvoir identifies as the ability to will oneself free?
(a) The individual uses time to manipulate the physical world to exercise his freedom.
(b) Time allows the accumulation of spontaneous acts to define their direction.
(c) Time is required for the individual to understand that he is free.
(d) The goal of freedom is pursued and confirmed in time.

5. What irony does Beauvoir suggest contributes to the most optimistic ethics.
(a) That all ethics eventually lead man to rationalize violations of their ethics.
(b) That although they seek to lift man to utopia, the eventually lead man to distopia.
(c) That they have all begun by emphasizing the element of failure involved in the condition of man.
(d) That although ethics are pursued to define man's existence, they always lead to ambiguity.

Short Answer Questions

1. How does Beauvoir explain that Marxists perceive that acts can be regarded as good or bad?

2. What does Beauvoir claim comes of an accomplished act that is left behind by an individual?

3. How does human spontaneity give purpose to a human life, according to Beauvoir?

4. In the face of emerging violence of man's growing mastery of the world, what does Beauvoir suggest to individuals who seek to navigate it?

5. How does Beauvoir explain what Descartes meant when he said that the freedom of man is infinite, but this power is limited?

(see the answer key)

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