View a FREE sample

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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. How does human spontaneity give purpose to a human life, according to Beauvoir?
(a) By spontaneity always projecting itself toward something.
(b) By spontaneous acts have affects in a physical world.
(c) By the fact the spontaneous act of an individual draws a response from others.
(d) By spontaneous acts require conscious evaluation to determine their usefulness.

2. What comes to the individual at the point he begins to notice the conflicts of the adult world, according to Beauvoir?
(a) The individual has the choice of holding to existentialist myths or accepting his ambiguity.
(b) The individual can pursue freedom or seriousness.
(c) The individual must at last assume his subjectivity.
(d) The individual faces the daunting challenge of pursuing ethics that have none of the inconsistencies that have plagued societies through history.

3. What does Beauvoir identify as the paradox of Marxist thought?
(a) "The point at which the proletariat overthrows the bourgeois, they immediately attempt to become bourgeois."
(b) "Marxist deny desires for material things while devoting their revolution to taking material things."
(c) "From the moment a man recognizes himself as free, he is prohibited from wishing for anything."
(d) "Marxist deny accepting morality while condemning all movements that do not accept their moral view."

4. 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 cast into a universe which he has not helped to establish and appears as an absolute to which he can only submit.
(c) He is subject to accept all things based upon what others tell him.
(d) His ambiguity is compounded by his ignorance of right and wrong.

5. How does Beauvoir claim the condition of the world changes from child to adolescence?
(a) The individual begins to realize that matter has significant influence on thought.
(b) The adolescent realizes his decisions have affects.
(c) When a child begins to realize he cannot create his own existence, he becomes accountable for his thoughts.
(d) The world is no longer ready made, but must be made.

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

7. 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) Sartre's man eliminates the needs for external moral influence by following passions that eventually lead to personal benefit.
(c) Since man is directed by his eternal passions, the external force of God has no influence in Sartre's existentialism.
(d) Since passions and their choices are internal, there are no objective standards by which to define their usefulness.

8. How does Beauvoir claim that the child develops the conviction of good and evil?
(a) Through punishments, prizes, words of praise or blame.
(b) Through observation and learning.
(c) Through pain and healing.
(d) Through joy and disappointment.

9. 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 ceaselessly returning to it and justify it as part of the project with which the individual is currently involved.
(c) By comparing present acts to the acts of the past.
(d) By keeping a record of all accomplishments to reflect upon those experiences with every decision.

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

11. 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 discontinue to attempt to keep up with the changes going on in the world.
(b) To assume and know the condition of our fundamental ambiguity.
(c) To seek to understand God's role in the growing environment of violence.
(d) To accept the insignificance of the individual as a means of embracing individual ambiguity.

12. What does Beauvoir state is the goal at which her freedom aims?
(a) "...(C)onquering existence across the always inadequate density of being."
(b) "Understanding the difference between delusion, denial, and stone pounding to affirm true existence."
(c) "Rejecting the verdicts of doubters and seeing the possibility of achieving ends through obstacles."
(d) "Seeing the doors of defeat before initiating and act."

13. How does Beauvoir characterize the purpose of the body?
(a) It enjoys the pleasures of freedom before consequences are manifest.
(b) It expresses our relationship to the world.
(c) It becomes the barometer that marks the move from child to adolescent to mature adult.
(d) It becomes the vessel that evaluates the harm or benefit of consequences.

14. How does Beauvoir bring into question the Marxist claim that pure proletariat revolution is generated by the proletariat class?
(a) A proletariat revolution is too often halted by various conditions in various locations.
(b) The Proletariat can be influenced by materialistic gain.
(c) Too often members of the proletariat seek to become bourgeois.
(d) That even a Marxist needs to make a personal decision to join one party or another.

15. What relationship does Beauvoir identify between ethics and facticity?
(a) Ethics cannot exist without facticity upon which to base them.
(b) Ethics are the spawn of facticity.
(c) Ethics is the triumph of freedom over facticity.
(d) Ethics is the ambiguous manipulation of facticity.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Beauvoir define as the drama of original choice?

2. How does Beauvoir define nihilism?

3. What does Beauvoir seek to prove regarding man's mastery of the world?

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

5. What does Beauvoir claim to be the affect of rejecting any extrinsic justification for internal choices?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,239 words (approx. 5 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample