View a FREE sample

This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Chapter 2, Personal Freedom and Others.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does Descartes credit man's unhappiness to, according to Beauvoir?
(a) Having first been a child.
(b) His inability to accept his ambiguity.
(c) The inner conflict between doing right and doing what he wants.
(d) His lack of freedom.

2. In what sense does Beauvoir claim that every man is free?
(a) In the sense that he is free to end or continue his existence.
(b) In the sense that only consequences affect his choices.
(c) In the sense that he can choose his own ethic.
(d) In the sense that he spontaneously casts himself into the world.

3. What does Beauvoir call pursuing the movement toward an end despite the obstacle of certain failure?
(a) The free movement of existence.
(b) The act of denial.
(c) The stone pounding complex.
(d) Fighting through delusions.

4. How does Beauvoir claim that Marxists consider man's actions to be valid?
(a) Only if the actions eliminate private property.
(b) Only if the actions are in opposition of the bourgeois.
(c) Only if the actions support the revolution of the proletariat.
(d) Only if the man has not helped initiate his action by an internal movement or through free will.

5. What does Beauvoir identify as the certain truth contained in the nihilist attitude?
(a) In the nihilist attitude one experiences the ambiguity of the human condition.
(b) The nihilist attitude understands the finite nature of life.
(c) The nihilist attitude realizes the unreliability of man.
(d) The nihilist attitude is prepared for obstacles that always come from a complex world.

Short Answer Questions

1. What relationship does Beauvoir identify between ethics and facticity?

2. How does Beauvoir explain that the Marxist paradox lends to her theory the scheme of man is ambiguous?

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

4. In what way does Beauvoir consider nihilistic thinking to be right?

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

(see the answer key)

This section contains 616 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample