Chapter 28 Self-Quiz

. By "ambiguity" de Beauvoir means

that all our words for women have multiple meanings.

that human beings are both immanent in the world and transcend it in consciousness.

that nothing can ever be definitively settled so far as ethics goes.

that it is hard to settle down and really be serious about life.

. Nihilism is

an attempt to escape from the ambiguity that we are.

forced upon us by the death of God.

the premise on which an authentic life must be built.

something "given" with the absurdity of the world.

. Being serious about one's life

requires the virtues of honesty and courage.

means looking death squarely in the face.

is a way of hiding one's freedom from oneself.

is the very opposite of fanaticism.

. Value appears in the world

if only we look at it without prejudice, forsaking our own little projects.

as a correlate of human projects.

in virtue of the world's dependence on God.

in so many ways that no one can determine an absolute value.

. The fundamental project for human beings is

to live as much like an adventurer as possible.

to justify one's life independently of what anyone else thinks of it.

to reconcile ourselves to the absurdity of existence.

to justify one's life by becoming necessary to others.

. Violence, de Beauvoir says,

never settles anything.

is never justified, even if violence is done to one.

may be required to oppose oppression.

is valuable in itself as an expression of the will to power.

. Woman has become the "second sex" because

women are biologically weaker than men.

men have overcome the strong resistance to oppression that women have engaged in throughout the centuries.

Scripture tells us that Eve was made for Adam.

it has suited both sexes to have it that way.

. That woman has been defined as "the Other" means

she has been understood to have only a relative existence.

no one can understand her.

the very essence of woman is written in how she is regarded.

she needs others as they need her.

. Patriarchy

signifies the dominance of the male.

abolished the ownership of women.

began by chance.

began in violent revolution.

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