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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 claim to be the choice that comes to a young man after a long crisis?
(a) He can accept his ambiguity and move to freedom and ethics, or he can return to the shelters of his childhood.
(b) He can escape the stress of his existence or throw himself into the object that defines his goal.
(c) He either turns back toward the world of his parents and teachers or he adheres to the values which are new but seem to him just as sure.
(d) He can define his life through his choices, or avoid his choices and slip into nothingness.

2. How does Beauvoir consider stubbornness in the face of an obstacle that is impossible to overcome?
(a) As stupidity.
(b) As that trial that brings experience.
(c) As the seed of innocent hope.
(d) As the beginning of innovation.

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

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

5. How does Beauvoir suggest a past accomplishment can be made relevant in the present?
(a) By ceaselessly returning to it and justify it as part of the project with which the individual is currently involved.
(b) By keeping a record of all accomplishments to reflect upon those experiences with every decision.
(c) By comparing present acts to the acts of the past.
(d) By tracing the affects of the act from the past through to the present.

Short Answer Questions

1. How does Beauvoir characterize the purpose of the body?

2. During their stage of freedom, how does Beauvoir claim that a child sees adults?

3. How does Beauvoir bring into question the Marxist claim that pure proletariat revolution is generated by the proletariat class?

4. What type of man does Beauvoir identify as being nihilistic?

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?

(see the answer key)

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