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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 explanation does Beauvoir give to assert that existentialist thought helps to build community.
(a) Beauvoir asserts, "Existentialists, with their dogmatic adherence to solipsism, help to rally a wide range of theorists to disprove their irrationality."
(b) Beauvoir asserts, "Existentialists are more often inviting of debate since they do not consider any idea as wrong because they accept no idea as right."
(c) Beauvoir asserts, "Despite their disparate views, existentialists easily welcome any detractor because they only see them as creations of their own minds."
(d) Beauvoir asserts, "...existentialism,...(is) the plurality of concrete particular men projecting themselves toward their ends on the basis of situations whose particularity is as radical and irreducible as subjectivity.

2. What does Beauvoir identify as the irony of the serious man?
(a) He pursues his serious goals but finds them to be insufficient once they are achieved.
(b) He claims that he freely chose his goals, but they are extensions of the structures that formed his childhood.
(c) He defends the seriousness of his goals while disputing the seriousness of the goals of others.
(d) He considers his goals to be serious whereas the free man considers them to be trivial.

3. What role does time play what Beauvoir identifies as the ability to will oneself free?
(a) The goal of freedom is pursued and confirmed in time.
(b) The individual uses time to manipulate the physical world to exercise his freedom.
(c) Time is required for the individual to understand that he is free.
(d) Time allows the accumulation of spontaneous acts to define their direction.

4. What is the focus of the adventurer?
(a) To satisfy a desire for existence in a present, subjective, abstract moment.
(b) To enter the future by leaving memorable acts for the past.
(c) To live in defiance of oppression for ambiguous goals.
(d) To define life by attempting to will himself free.

5. In the face of emerging violence of man's growing mastery of the world, what does Beauvoir suggest to individuals who seek to navigate it?
(a) To assume and know the condition of our fundamental ambiguity.
(b) To seek to understand God's role in the growing environment of violence.
(c) To accept the insignificance of the individual as a means of embracing individual ambiguity.
(d) To discontinue to attempt to keep up with the changes going on in the world.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Beauvoir claim defines the "sub-man"?

2. What does Beauvoir claim comes of an accomplished act that is left behind by an individual?

3. At what time does Beauvoir suggest that children begin to notice the contradictions, hesitations and weaknesses of adults?

4. How does Beauvoir claim that a spontaneous action, or flight, can be converted into will?

5. How does Beauvoir compare southern slaves to children?

(see the answer key)

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