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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 4-5, The Present and the Future, Ambiguity and Conclusion.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. How does Beauvoir compare the present to the future?
(a) The only point in time in which the individual can come to grasp their reality.
(b) As only negative which must be eliminated as such.
(c) The moment that, when combined with the line of the past, defines the ambiguity of freedom.
(d) As that moment that quickly passes both into the past and the future.

2. 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 intellectual and bourgeois revolutions are considered suspiciously by the proletariat.
(d) Where revolt, need, hope, rejection, and desire are only the resultants of external forces.

3. How does Beauvoir illustrate her example proves her point that, "festivals stop the movement of transcendence?"
(a) Pagans who adopt Christian labels for the celebrations are starting the process of renouncing their paganism.
(b) Christians allow the influences of pagan observances to obscure the principles of the Bible.
(c) The festival regarding the liberation of Paris allowed people to temporarily ignore the coming difficulties that were to come to their post-war society.
(d) Throughout history empires leave the discipline that made their systems transcendent for the pleasures found during festivals.

4. How is Beauvoir asking each one to confirm their existence through the ethics of ambiguity?
(a) As a means to an end.
(b) By the transcendence of goals.
(c) By combining mind to matter through projects.
(d) As a value for all others.

5. How does Beauvoir define nihilism?
(a) Nihilism is disappointed seriousness which has been turned back upon itself.
(b) Nihilism is the point at which existentialists realize that reality is not framed by their thoughts.
(c) Nihilism is the recognition of the sub-man that he has no purpose outside of what has been defined for him.
(d) Nihilism is the point of nothingness that is felt at the point that the serious man reaches his goals.

Short Answer Questions

1. What three considerations an individual make before acting are abstract, according to Beauvoir?

2. How does Beauvoir illustrate how ambiguity affected Christianity?

3. What does Beauvoir indicate can sometimes happen when there is a failure of the serious?

4. How does Beauvoir consider stubbornness in the face of an obstacle that is impossible to overcome?

5. How does Beauvoir claim that a slave can exercise freedom?

(see the answer key)

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