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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 human spontaneity give purpose to a human life, according to Beauvoir?
(a) By spontaneous acts have affects in a physical world.
(b) By the fact the spontaneous act of an individual draws a response from others.
(c) By spontaneity always projecting itself toward something.
(d) By spontaneous acts require conscious evaluation to determine their usefulness.

2. What are the two clans that Beauvoir claims to come from oppression?
(a) Those who enlighten mankind by thrusting it ahead of itself, and those who are condemned to mark time hopelessly.
(b) The oppressors and the oppressed.
(c) Those who believe their status allows them the freedom to oppress and those whose freedom is taken for the benefit of those of status.
(d) Those who escape into their aesthetic only to allow their oppressive ideas to penetrate reality and subject the freedom of others to mechanically toil to satisfy their needs.

3. What are the two meanings that Beauvoir gives to the word future.
(a) Future is both a speculation and a target.
(b) It is the ambiguous condition of man which is lack of being as well as man's existence.
(c) The future is never here, but man is always moving toward it.
(d) Future is that which is yet to come, but is the substance of all projects.

4. What irony does Beauvoir suggest contributes to the most optimistic ethics.
(a) That although ethics are pursued to define man's existence, they always lead to ambiguity.
(b) That although they seek to lift man to utopia, the eventually lead man to distopia.
(c) That they have all begun by emphasizing the element of failure involved in the condition of man.
(d) That all ethics eventually lead man to rationalize violations of their ethics.

5. How does Beauvoir characterize the response of Western women when the structures that shelter them seem to be in danger?
(a) They become harder, more bitter and even more furious or cruel than their masters.
(b) They become confused and bewildered to the point of despair.
(c) They drive themselves further into the subjection that makes them child like.
(d) They become detached and unemotional.

Short Answer Questions

1. Why does Beauvoir suggest that if man waits for universal peace to establish his existence validly, he will wait indefinitely?

2. What are projects according to Beauvoir?

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

4. What is the illustration Beauvoir uses to prove her assertion of stubbornness in the face of impossibility?

5. Although Beauvoir reports that existentialism defined itself as a philosophy of ambiguity, what does she claim to be existentialism's fundamental flaw?

(see the answer key)

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