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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Although Beauvoir reports that existentialism defined itself as a philosophy of ambiguity, what does she claim to be existentialism's fundamental flaw?
(a) Its true ambiguity is superficial since it has no moral code.
(b) Existentialism is essentially taken by individuals seeking to pursue what is normally antisocial and contributes to the violence of mastery of nature.
(c) It is so deeply ambiguous that its true understanding cannot be achieved.
(d) It is incapable of furnishing any principle for making choices.

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

3. What irony does Beauvoir suggest contributes to the most optimistic ethics.
(a) That although ethics are pursued to define man's existence, they always lead to ambiguity.
(b) That although they seek to lift man to utopia, the eventually lead man to distopia.
(c) That all ethics eventually lead man to rationalize violations of their ethics.
(d) That they have all begun by emphasizing the element of failure involved in the condition of man.

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

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

6. 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 pursues his serious goals but finds them to be insufficient once they are achieved.
(c) He considers his goals to be serious whereas the free man considers them to be trivial.
(d) He defends the seriousness of his goals while disputing the seriousness of the goals of others.

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

8. What does Beauvoir claim comes, "...between the past which no longer is and the future which is not yet,..."?
(a) The ever changing moment of the present.
(b) This moment when (the individual) exists.
(c) The point at which time ceases to move.
(d) The crossroads of reality.

9. What does Beauvoir claim matters to the serious man?
(a) Using his ambiguity to shape his ethics.
(b) Being able to lose himself in the nature of the object which he prefers to himself.
(c) Setting a track to achieve a predetermined goal.
(d) Subjecting himself to the project that defines his ambiguity to himself.

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

11. How does the "sub-man" submerge his freedom, according to Beauvoir?
(a) He avoids actions that have consequences.
(b) He refuses subjectivity in favor of predictability.
(c) He ignores the ambiguity of his existence.
(d) He accepts the ethics and expectations of society.

12. Beauvoir claims that critics of existentialism claim that it is solipsistic. What is solipsism?
(a) The theory that life is nothing more than a creation in the mind of God.
(b) The theory that only the physical life exists and matter is eternal.
(c) The theory that only the self (mind) exists or can be proven to exist.
(d) The theory that life is replicated on many planets in many worlds.

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

14. How does Beauvoir introduce the role of God in the discussion of ethics?
(a) By pointing out that Sartre's view of existentialism ends with man attempting to make himself God.
(b) By considering the endless pursuit of pure ethics and the failure to achieve such places the power of judgement in the hands of God.
(c) By pointing out that all ethics end up being an effort to define God.
(d) By suggesting the wide views of the nature of God actually makes God ambiguous.

15. By quoting Dostoyevsky ("If God does not exist, then everything is permitted"), what examination does Beauvoir make?
(a) The role of an external moral code in extinguishing passions.
(b) The role of the existence of God in defining the existence of man and the world.
(c) The role of the physical world on the development of a moral code.
(d) The role of a dualistic spiritual existence in directing passion.

Short Answer Questions

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

2. What does Beauvoir claim comes of an accomplished act that is left behind by an individual?

3. 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?

4. How does Beauvoir explain that Marxists perceive that acts can be regarded as good or bad?

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

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