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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. How does Beauvoir explain that Marxists perceive that acts can be regarded as good or bad?
(a) Only when systems are formed in which each gives according to his ability.
(b) Through the revolt of a class which define aims and goals from a which a new state appears as desirable.
(c) Only through the destruction of private property.
(d) Only when systems are designed that each takes according to his need.

2. What does Beauvoir call pursuing the movement toward an end despite the obstacle of certain failure?
(a) The act of denial.
(b) Fighting through delusions.
(c) The free movement of existence.
(d) The stone pounding complex.

3. What claim of existentialists does Beauvoir offer in defense of detractors to existentialism?
(a) Bouvoir claims that existentialists help to accentuate the strengths of other theories.
(b) Bouvoir claims that existentialists offer their detractors important challenges to prove their theories.
(c) Bouvoir claims that existentialists believe that the world is willed by man, insofar as his will expresses his genuine reality.
(d) Bouvoir claims that existentialists give focus to the importance of matter in reality.

4. How does Beauvoir show how her example of moving through obstacles prove her arguments?
(a) She explained that Sisyphus was condemned to rolling the boulder up the mountain despite his the fact that it would roll back down once he got it to the top.
(b) She pointed out that Hitler had desires to rule the world in spite of the fact that he did not have the ability to take his navy outside of the North Sea.
(c) She explained that Adalai Stevenson believed his intellectualism would over come Dwight Eisenhower's popular reputation in two presidential elections.
(d) She asserted that Van Gogh, despite being institutionalized, integrated his his past as a painter and continued to communicate through his talent.

5. How does Beauvoir claim that Marxists consider man's actions to be valid?
(a) Only if the actions support the revolution of the proletariat.
(b) Only if the actions eliminate private property.
(c) Only if the man has not helped initiate his action by an internal movement or through free will.
(d) Only if the actions are in opposition of the bourgeois.

6. How does Beauvoir define materialist philosophers?
(a) Those who have "striven to reduce mind to matter".
(b) Those who "conceive all matter as eternal".
(c) Those who "see no life after this one".
(d) Those who see "no value in thought".

7. 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) Because of the voting privilege of Western societies, the opinions of women must be taken more seriously than children.
(c) Children have no instrument to attack the civilization which oppresses them, but women have their charm and guile.
(d) The condition of children are forced upon them, but women choose their condition.

8. How does Beauvoir suggest that a child console himself when confronted with personal imperfection?
(a) By pinning his hopes on the future.
(b) By denying the flaw and moving to his next goal.
(c) By holding to ignorance so as not to have to explain his predicament.
(d) By blaming his problem on another child.

9. What does Beauvoir report to be the child's situation?
(a) He faces the reality that his freedom is continually reduced by his growing knowledge.
(b) He is subject to accept all things based upon what others tell him.
(c) He is cast into a universe which he has not helped to establish and appears as an absolute to which he can only submit.
(d) His ambiguity is compounded by his ignorance of right and wrong.

10. To what conclusion to Beauvoir arrive regarding Sartre's internal choices that are affected by personal passions?
(a) Since Sartre considers man as driven by internal passions, he brings to question the existence of the physical world and its causes and effects.
(b) Since passions and their choices are internal, there are no objective standards by which to define their usefulness.
(c) Since man is directed by his eternal passions, the external force of God has no influence in Sartre's existentialism.
(d) Sartre's man eliminates the needs for external moral influence by following passions that eventually lead to personal benefit.

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

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

13. How does Beauvoir define nihilism?
(a) Nihilism is the point at which existentialists realize that reality is not framed by their thoughts.
(b) Nihilism is the recognition of the sub-man that he has no purpose outside of what has been defined for him.
(c) Nihilism is the point of nothingness that is felt at the point that the serious man reaches his goals.
(d) Nihilism is disappointed seriousness which has been turned back upon itself.

14. How does Beauvoir compare Marxism to existentialism?
(a) Marxism rejects the idea of authority in the development of organized masses.
(b) Marxism establishes moral thought through mass rejection of the moral order.
(c) Marxism rejects the idea of inhuman objectivity and locates itself in the tradition of Kant and Hegel.
(d) Marxism rejects the moral foundations of law that are rooted in the protection of public property.

15. Who does Beauvoir use as an example of moving through such obstacles?
(a) Adalai Stevenson.
(b) Vincent Van Gogh.
(c) Sisyphus.
(d) Hitler.

Short Answer Questions

1. Beauvoir claims that critics of existentialism claim that it is solipsistic. What is solipsism?

2. What does Beauvoir claim a child can do due to his state of security?

3. In what sense does Beauvoir claim that every man is free?

4. How does Beauvoir explain that the Marxist paradox lends to her theory the scheme of man is ambiguous?

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

(see the answer keys)

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