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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 1-3, The Aesthetic Attitude, Freedom and Liberation, The Antinomies of Action.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. 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) "Marxist deny desires for material things while devoting their revolution to taking material things."
(d) "The point at which the proletariat overthrows the bourgeois, they immediately attempt to become bourgeois."

2. How does Beauvoir compare Marxism to existentialism?
(a) Marxism rejects the idea of authority in the development of organized masses.
(b) Marxism rejects the idea of inhuman objectivity and locates itself in the tradition of Kant and Hegel.
(c) Marxism rejects the moral foundations of law that are rooted in the protection of public property.
(d) Marxism establishes moral thought through mass rejection of the moral order.

3. What is the point at which existentialism is opposed to dialectic materialism according to Beauvoir?
(a) Where subjectivity and objectivity become equally determined by the revolt of the proletariat.
(b) When the proletariat universally works to eliminate its class.
(c) Where revolt, need, hope, rejection, and desire are only the resultants of external forces.
(d) Where intellectual and bourgeois revolutions are considered suspiciously by the proletariat.

4. How does Beauvoir claim the condition of the world changes from child to adolescence?
(a) The individual begins to realize that matter has significant influence on thought.
(b) The world is no longer ready made, but must be made.
(c) The adolescent realizes his decisions have affects.
(d) When a child begins to realize he cannot create his own existence, he becomes accountable for his thoughts.

5. What does Beauvoir define as the drama of original choice?
(a) That it goes on moment by moment for an entire lifetime.
(b) That its affects are ambiguous.
(c) That it justifies the positions of existentialists.
(d) That it has both cause and effect.

Short Answer Questions

1. What are some of the causes that Beauvoir points out that oppressors will claim to defend in their battles against those who try to overthrow them?

2. By quoting Dostoyevsky ("If God does not exist, then everything is permitted"), what examination does Beauvoir make?

3. How does Beauvoir define the Aesthetic Attitude?

4. In the challenge for those who suffer more than one oppressor, what answer does Beauvoir offer?

5. How does Beauvoir explain how goals supplant freedom in the life of the serious man?

(see the answer key)

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