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

2. Beauvoir claims that critics of existentialism claim that it is solipsistic. What is solipsism?
(a) The theory that life is nothing more than a creation in the mind of God.
(b) The theory that only the self (mind) exists or can be proven to exist.
(c) The theory that only the physical life exists and matter is eternal.
(d) The theory that life is replicated on many planets in many worlds.

3. What claim of existentialists does Beauvoir offer in defense of detractors to existentialism?
(a) Bouvoir claims that existentialists help to accentuate the strengths of other theories.
(b) Bouvoir claims that existentialists offer their detractors important challenges to prove their theories.
(c) Bouvoir claims that existentialists give focus to the importance of matter in reality.
(d) Bouvoir claims that existentialists believe that the world is willed by man, insofar as his will expresses his genuine reality.

4. How does Beauvoir suggest a past accomplishment can be made relevant in the present?
(a) By tracing the affects of the act from the past through to the present.
(b) By comparing present acts to the acts of the past.
(c) By keeping a record of all accomplishments to reflect upon those experiences with every decision.
(d) By ceaselessly returning to it and justify it as part of the project with which the individual is currently involved.

5. What quote from Lenin does Beauvoir use to demonstrate the Marxist revolution has human meaning?
(a) "I call any action useful to the party moral action; I call it immoral if it is harmful to the party."
(b) "We say that our morality is entirely subordinated to the interests of the proletariat's class struggle."
(c) "Our action only has meaning if it brings down the influence of the bourgeois."
(d) "The entire purpose of training, educating and teaching the youth of today should be to imbue them with communist ethics."

Short Answer Questions

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

2. What is the illustration Beauvoir uses to prove her assertion of stubbornness in the face of impossibility?

3. What does Beauvoir claim can come to people who are filled with the horror of defeat?

4. How does Beauvoir compare Marxism to existentialism?

5. What does Beauvoir state is the goal at which her freedom aims?

(see the answer key)

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