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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. What is a principle that Beauvoir states that an ethics of ambiguity will refuse to deny a priori?
(a) That, by definition, "ethics of ambiguity" must remained undefined.
(b) That "ethics of ambiguity" are as solipsistic as is existentialism.
(c) That the most important element of "ethics of ambiguity" is to disallow them from defining the conduct of those outside their understanding.
(d) That separate existants can be bound to each other, such as individual freedoms can forge laws valid for all.

2. What prevents a moral question from presenting itself to the child according to Beauvoir?
(a) The misunderstanding of spontaneity and affects.
(b) Ignorance of consequences.
(c) A lack of perspective to see himself in the past or seeing himself in the future.
(d) Ignorance of the physical world.

3. 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) That the more widespread men attain mastery of the world, the more they find themselves crushed by it.
(c) Man's mastery of the world is futile, because nature is constantly changing beyond man's ability to contain it.
(d) With each gain to control his surroundings, man feels himself more insignificant within the immense collectivity on the earth.

4. How does human spontaneity give purpose to a human life, according to Beauvoir?
(a) By spontaneous acts have affects in a physical world.
(b) By spontaneity always projecting itself toward something.
(c) By the fact the spontaneous act of an individual draws a response from others.
(d) By spontaneous acts require conscious evaluation to determine their usefulness.

5. What is the paradox with which Beauvoir closes Chapter One?
(a) "Man cannot know existence without first knowing his nothingness."
(b) Man is a being that, "in order to know the existence of achievement he must face the nothingness of failure."
(c) In order to fill his existence, man must assume himself as a being who, "makes himself a lack of being so that there might be being."
(d) Man as an individual is, "At once alone in himself which makes up the mass of universality."

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Beauvoir suggest becomes the intellectual responsibility of existentialists who reject God?

2. To what conclusion to Beauvoir arrive regarding Sartre's internal choices that are affected by personal passions?

3. At what point does Beauvoir claim an individual has the ability to decide and choose?

4. How does Beauvoir bring into question the Marxist claim that pure proletariat revolution is generated by the proletariat class?

5. What does Beauvoir claim comes, "...between the past which no longer is and the future which is not yet,..."?

(see the answer key)

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