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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. How does Beauvoir compare women to slaves?
(a) By pointing out that women create an existence in their minds that escapes the reality of the world around them.
(b) By pointing out that women are subject to the laws, gods, customs, and truths created by males.
(c) By pointing out that many women choose to be ignorant of the condition of the world.
(d) By pointing out that women base their success on the contentment of their families.

2. What does Beauvoir indicate can sometimes happen when there is a failure of the serious?
(a) Sometimes the serious man will revert to his childhood and depend on others for his purpose.
(b) Sometimes the serious man will recognize his ambiguity and act freely to establish an ethic to help him through his failure.
(c) It can bring about a radical disorder.
(d) The serious man will have to rely on what training he had as a child to deal with failure.

3. How does Beauvoir explain the differences between the conditions of Western women from that of children?
(a) Western women have left the life of children to accept the serious life.
(b) Children have no instrument to attack the civilization which oppresses them, but women have their charm and guile.
(c) The condition of children are forced upon them, but women choose their condition.
(d) Because of the voting privilege of Western societies, the opinions of women must be taken more seriously than children.

4. How does Beauvoir claim that a spontaneous action, or flight, can be converted into will?
(a) By accepting the consequences of the spontaneous act.
(b) By evaluating the usefulness of the spontaneous act.
(c) By assuming the project positively.
(d) By recognizing the effects of the spontaneous act on the physical world.

5. Why does Beauvoir claim that some individuals have lives that slip into an infantile world?
(a) Because they never leave the fanciful world they create in their minds.
(b) Because they discover they are incompetent in the direction they choose for their lives.
(c) Because they are kept in a state of servitude and ignorance and have no means of breaking the ceiling which is over their heads.
(d) Because the labor they choose prevents them from using their minds.

6. During their stage of freedom, how does Beauvoir claim that a child sees adults?
(a) As physically threatening.
(b) As fanciful projections of their uninhibited minds.
(c) As divinities.
(d) As benevolent dictators that provide their needs.

7. How does Beauvoir explain that the Marxist paradox lends to her theory the scheme of man is ambiguous?
(a) She points out that , "He wants to be, and to the extent that the coincides with this wish, he fails."
(b) She suggests that, although, "Marxists deride traditional moral codes that forbid theft and adultery as being 'bourgeois', she points out that strict adherence to Marxist dogma is a moral imperative for revolution."
(c) She shows that, "Morality is based on denial, while work and labor is based upon acquisition."
(d) She agrees that, "One even the most devoted proletariat has what he needs, he begins feeding his desires."

8. At what point does Beauvoir claim an individual has the ability to decide and choose?
(a) When he can see and manipulate the affects of spontaneous acts on the physical world.
(b) When the usefulness of spontaneous acts are identifiable by the individual.
(c) When he responds to the consequences of spontaneous acts.
(d) When the moments of his life begin to be organized into behavior.

9. How does Beauvoir compare southern slaves to children?
(a) By comparing hopes for freedom to the a child's hope for the future.
(b) By comparing their obedience to the slave owner to that of children to adults in their lives.
(c) By comparing their faith in a heavenly afterlife to the fantasy world that children create in their minds.
(d) By comparing the ignorance of their condition to the ignorance of children to the realities of the world.

10. To what does Beauvoir compare the "sub-man" in his relationship to ethics and facticity?
(a) To the cowardly writer who will not publish and therefore does not exist.
(b) To the faceless laborer who's production has more purpose than does he.
(c) To the purposeless book that never gets taken from the shelf.
(d) To trees and pebbles which are not aware that they exist.

11. According to Beauvoir, how is freedom present within the drama of choice?
(a) Within the analysis that leads to a decision.
(b) In the moment before consequences are evident.
(c) Before the realization that a choice must be made.
(d) Only in the form of contingency.

12. How does Beauvoir characterize the fate of the "sub-man"?
(a) He makes his way across a world deprived of meaning toward a death which merely confirm his long negation of himself.
(b) His ethics and facticity have no consequences, therefore they are nonexistent.
(c) He finds nothing to appreciate and in turn no one appreciates him.
(d) He does not recognize his facticity, therefore he does not experience the triumph of freedom through the development of his ethics.

13. How does Beauvoir identify dualism?
(a) They are thinkers that establish a hierarchy between body and soul.
(b) They are thinkers that believe that the only two human values are life and death.
(c) They are thinkers that set to prove that each life has a dual existence in a different dimension.
(d) They are thinkers that claim that each individual is destined to live a brief physical life and an eternal spiritual life.

14. What is the point at which existentialism is opposed to dialectic materialism according to Beauvoir?
(a) Where intellectual and bourgeois revolutions are considered suspiciously by the proletariat.
(b) Where revolt, need, hope, rejection, and desire are only the resultants of external forces.
(c) When the proletariat universally works to eliminate its class.
(d) Where subjectivity and objectivity become equally determined by the revolt of the proletariat.

15. What does Beauvoir claim to protect the child from the risk of existence?
(a) His obedience to adults.
(b) His budding existentialist belief that only thoughts matter.
(c) The ceiling which human generations have built over his head.
(d) His inability to comprehend the consequences of decisions.

Short Answer Questions

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

2. How does Beauvoir consider stubbornness in the face of an obstacle that is impossible to overcome?

3. What relationship does Beauvoir identify between ethics and facticity?

4. How does Beauvoir accuse Marxists of accepting moral superiority?

5. How does Beauvoir characterize the response of Western women when the structures that shelter them seem to be in danger?

(see the answer keys)

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