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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. At what point does Beauvoir declare the death of an individual is not a failure?
(a) When the cause for which he died preserves freedom for all.
(b) If the cause for which he died is carried on by his survivors.
(c) If his death leads to the victory of his cause.
(d) When it is integrated into a project which surpasses the limits of life.

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

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

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

5. For whom do Beauvoir and Marx agree that the cause of freedom is most urgent?
(a) Women who are unaware of the subjugation to men.
(b) The unenlightened who does not realize their exploitation.
(c) The proletariat who is controlled by the bourgeois.
(d) To the oppressed that it appears as immediately necessary.

Short Answer Questions

1. Why does Beauvoir claim that no project can be considered to be purely contemplative?

2. How does Beauvoir explain that artists can betray their aim with their aesthetic justification?

3. In the face of emerging violence of man's growing mastery of the world, what does Beauvoir suggest to individuals who seek to navigate it?

4. What does Beauvoir claim matters to the serious man?

5. How does Beauvoir define materialist philosophers?

(see the answer key)

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