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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. In what way does Beauvoir consider nihilistic thinking to be right?
(a) In understanding the obstacles that come from a complex world.
(b) In thinking that the world possesses no justification and that he himself is nothing.
(c) In realizing that peace is punctuated by oppression and revolution.
(d) In understanding the future will be marked by violence.

2. What does Beauvoir suggest of movements whose means of achieving a goal contradicts the goal?
(a) The action will set off a chain of events that will negate the goal.
(b) The individual who takes such an approach will become a politician.
(c) The whole enterprise sinks into absurdity.
(d) The goal and the individual will be disregarded.

3. How does Beauvoir claim to be the only means by which the present can retrieve itself?
(a) By transcending itself toward the permanence of future being.
(b) Through politicians who deny obvious truth so as to delay the consequences of their present decisions.
(c) By holding with an existentialist who has adopted the Aesthetic Attitude.
(d) Through similar events through history.

4. What quote from Saint-Just does Beauvoir use to point out the paradox to the fight for freedom?
(a) "Power flows from the end of a gun."
(b) "Power abhors a vacuum."
(c) "No one governs innocently."
(d) "If one wants to break from a hard ruler, he must become a hard ruler."

5. What does Beauvoir identify as the worst thing to be said for violence?
(a) It breaks people out of the recognition of their ambiguity by defining absolute consequences for misuse of freedom.
(b) It forces us to sacrifice men who are in our way as well those who fight on our side -- or even ourselves.
(c) It leads to our enslavement to tactics rather than thought.
(d) It begins cycles of violence motivated by revenge that removes freedom for all.

Short Answer Questions

1. How does Beauvoir claim that the individual with the Aesthetic Attitude regard his role in history?

2. What does Beauvoir mean when she writes, "...festivals whose role is to stop the movement of transcendence?"

3. When does Beauvoir suggest an individual might adopt the Aesthetic Attitude?

4. What is the point at which existentialism is opposed to dialectic materialism according to Beauvoir?

5. How does Beauvoir claim a goal is defined?

(see the answer key)

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