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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Chapter 2, Personal Freedom and Others.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does Beauvoir seek to prove regarding man's mastery of the world?
(a) Man's mastery of the world is futile, because nature is constantly changing beyond man's ability to contain it.
(b) With each gain to control his surroundings, man feels himself more insignificant within the immense collectivity on the earth.
(c) Man's journey to master the world is a quest to meet God.
(d) That the more widespread men attain mastery of the world, the more they find themselves crushed by it.

2. What does Beauvoir claim a child can do due to his state of security?
(a) He can choose a direction in which he desires to remove his ignorance.
(b) He can do with impunity whatever he likes.
(c) He can create the world he wants to exist.
(d) He can have all his needs provided without labor.

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

4. What does Beauvoir claim comes of an accomplished act that is left behind by an individual?
(a) It has a diminished affect as time and spontaneous acts have different consequences.
(b) The affects of the act continue, but the act becomes forgotten.
(c) It becomes nothing more than a fact.
(d) The act remains as an experience that lends to the development of the will.

5. How does Beauvoir explain that the serious man becomes a dangerous tyrant?
(a) He ignores the subjectivity of his choice and sacrifices the freedom of others to achieve his goals.
(b) The consequences of his choices to devote himself to his goal requires that he direct the choices of those around him.
(c) His ultimate goal is always to exert power over other people and usurp their freedom to his purposes.
(d) His choice to reject the ambiguity of his freedom combined with the desire to achieve his goal drives him to subject those in his environment to nothing more than instruments of achievement.

Short Answer Questions

1. How does Beauvoir suggest a past accomplishment can be made relevant in the present?

2. What explanation does Beauvoir give to assert that existentialist thought helps to build community.

3. How does human spontaneity give purpose to a human life, according to Beauvoir?

4. How does Beauvoir suggest that a child console himself when confronted with personal imperfection?

5. What is a principle that Beauvoir states that an ethics of ambiguity will refuse to deny a priori?

(see the answer key)

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