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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 the serious man becomes a dangerous tyrant?
(a) His choice to reject the ambiguity of his freedom combined with the desire to achieve his goal drives him to subject those in his environment to nothing more than instruments of achievement.
(b) He ignores the subjectivity of his choice and sacrifices the freedom of others to achieve his goals.
(c) The consequences of his choices to devote himself to his goal requires that he direct the choices of those around him.
(d) His ultimate goal is always to exert power over other people and usurp their freedom to his purposes.

2. To what does Beauvoir compare the "sub-man" in his relationship to ethics and facticity?
(a) To trees and pebbles which are not aware that they 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 the cowardly writer who will not publish and therefore does not exist.

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

4. What does Beauvoir claim can come to people who are filled with the horror of defeat?
(a) They must go back to their most recent success to retrace the steps of purpose.
(b) They reach the need to recall experience to make purpose of life.
(c) They would keep themselves from ever doing anything.
(d) The face the transcendent moment at which they must face failure or freedom to act.

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

6. How does the child's life begin actually become serious according to Beauvoir?
(a) By restricting his actions to those that gain rewards.
(b) By learning which erases his ignorance.
(c) By feeling the consequences of poorly thought decisions.
(d) Through following the examples of role models.

7. What does Beauvoir report comes to the individual at the time the world changes in his perspective?
(a) He faces the choice of repeating past mistakes or breaking from them.
(b) He can begin to control the consequences of his acts.
(c) The world is no longer ready made.
(d) He has the moment of moral choice.

8. How does Beauvoir explain how goals supplant freedom in the life of the serious man?
(a) The serious man rejects all independent thought for the sake of achieving his goal.
(b) Rather than finding freedom in choosing goals, the serious man chooses goals to avoid his freedom.
(c) The serious man is defined by his goal not by his choices or acts.
(d) Goals become the means of defining the existence of the serious man at the cost of freedom and individually defining his ethics.

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

10. How does Beauvoir explain that a child, himself, is not serious?
(a) A child is not affected by the knowledge of things that have been established before him.
(b) A child is allowed to play and expend his existence freely to passionately pursue and joyfully attain goals which he has set up for himself.
(c) A child is not aware that his fate is the grave.
(d) A child's thoughts are often fanciful and unrealistic.

11. At what time does Beauvoir suggest that children begin to notice the contradictions, hesitations and weaknesses of adults?
(a) Adolescence.
(b) When they begin to see how their actions affect the world around them.
(c) The age of accountability.
(d) At the time the become interested in the opposite sex.

12. In what sense does Beauvoir claim that every man is free?
(a) In the sense that he can choose his own ethic.
(b) In the sense that only consequences affect his choices.
(c) In the sense that he is free to end or continue his existence.
(d) In the sense that he spontaneously casts himself into the world.

13. 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 become confused and bewildered to the point of despair.
(c) They drive themselves further into the subjection that makes them child like.
(d) They become harder, more bitter and even more furious or cruel than their masters.

14. What type of man does Beauvoir identify as being nihilistic?
(a) The point at which the serious man realizes the pursuit of his goals have been made at the expense of his freedom.
(b) When a man who faces failure becomes conscious of being unable to be anything and decides to be nothing.
(c) The man who sees the futility of his goals and realizes he has missed the benefits of his ambiguity.
(d) The man who disputes the seriousness of another man's goals to the point that his goals are regarded as generally useless as a consequence.

15. What is the illustration Beauvoir uses to prove her assertion of stubbornness in the face of impossibility?
(a) The deaths that preceded the first successful climb of Mt. Everest.
(b) Beating her fist upon a stone.
(c) The development of the airplane.
(d) The sapling that grows through a sidewalk.

Short Answer Questions

1. How does Beauvoir identify dualism?

2. What does Beauvoir indicate can sometimes happen when there is a failure of the serious?

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

4. What does Beauvoir report to the the qualities of God that establishes moral standards?

5. How does Beauvoir claim that the child develops the conviction of good and evil?

(see the answer keys)

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