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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 claim comes, "...between the past which no longer is and the future which is not yet,..."?
(a) The ever changing moment of the present.
(b) This moment when (the individual) exists.
(c) The point at which time ceases to move.
(d) The crossroads of reality.

2. Upon what does Beauvoir claim that a child's freedom is based?
(a) Upon his willingness to trust adults without question.
(b) Upon his inability to grasp the concept of cause and effect.
(c) Upon ignorance that makes all his decisions meaningless.
(d) Upon adults whom he is only to respect and obey.

3. How does Beauvoir define materialist philosophers?
(a) Those who have "striven to reduce mind to matter".
(b) Those who "conceive all matter as eternal".
(c) Those who see "no value in thought".
(d) Those who "see no life after this one".

4. What does Beauvoir suggest becomes the intellectual responsibility of existentialists who reject God?
(a) He bears the responsibility to show his works for self-benefit do not affect others in his environs.
(b) He bears responsibility for a world which is not the work of strange power.
(c) He has the responsibility of defining how works for self-benefit are also beneficial to his environs.
(d) He bears the responsibility to prove the lives of others have not affects on himself, starting with the union of his parents that brought his existence.

5. What does Beauvoir claim to be the relationship between the serious and nihilism?
(a) The serious man and nihilists dispute the purpose of those who do not support their goals.
(b) Seriousness and nihilism focus on goals or the impossibility of reaching them to avoid accepting the freedom of ambiguity.
(c) Seriousness and nihilism both develop a narrow set of ethics based upon a relationship to achievement or lack of the same.
(d) The serious man often rallies to a partial nihilism, denying everything which is not its object.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Beauvoir identify as the certain truth contained in the nihilist attitude?

2. What does Beauvoir claim comes of the man who does not use his the necessary instruments to escape the lie of his serious life that prevents his freedom?

3. What does Beauvoir claim a child can do due to his state of security?

4. How does Beauvoir claim that the child develops the conviction of good and evil?

5. What does Beauvoir require for an individual to genuinely desire an end in the present?

(see the answer key)

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