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

Multiple Choice Questions

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

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

3. To what does Beauvoir compare the "sub-man"?
(a) A bad painter.
(b) An unpublished writer.
(c) A common laborer.
(d) A dull book.

4. 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 require conscious evaluation to determine their usefulness.
(c) By spontaneous acts have affects in a physical world.
(d) By the fact the spontaneous act of an individual draws a response from others.

5. What does Beauvoir claim to be the basis upon which a man decides upon what he wants to be?
(a) Upon the basis of his ethical code providing the greatest benefit.
(b) Upon the basis of what he has been.
(c) Upon the basis of moral choice.
(d) Upon the basis of the most beneficial consequences of his acts.

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

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

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

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

10. What does Beauvoir claim defines the "sub-man"?
(a) The man who lives below the potential of his abilities because of choice.
(b) The man who rejects the passion of his human condition and lives according to the world than has been established before him.
(c) The man whose lack of being is defined by his choice.
(d) The man who avoids choice and lives a lack of being.

11. How does Beauvoir explain what Descartes meant when he said that the freedom of man is infinite, but this power is limited?
(a) The individual man has the power to follow his desires until his pursuit is obstructed by a more power man.
(b) That man's mind has no limits in thought, but his physical body does not have the ability to follow the thoughts.
(c) That man is free to believe all things, but achieving them is subject to the physical universe.
(d) That the will is defined only by raising obstacles and by the contingency of certain obstacles that let themselves be conquered and others that do not.

12. How does Beauvoir consider stubbornness in the face of an obstacle that is impossible to overcome?
(a) As that trial that brings experience.
(b) As the seed of innocent hope.
(c) As the beginning of innovation.
(d) As stupidity.

13. How does Beauvoir explain that the Marxist paradox lends to her theory the scheme of man is ambiguous?
(a) 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."
(b) She agrees that, "One even the most devoted proletariat has what he needs, he begins feeding his desires."
(c) She points out that , "He wants to be, and to the extent that the coincides with this wish, he fails."
(d) She shows that, "Morality is based on denial, while work and labor is based upon acquisition."

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

15. 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's thoughts are often fanciful and unrealistic.
(c) 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.
(d) A child is not aware that his fate is the grave.

Short Answer Questions

1. What role does time play what Beauvoir identifies as the ability to will oneself free?

2. What quote from Lenin does Beauvoir use to demonstrate the Marxist revolution has human meaning?

3. What prevents a moral question from presenting itself to the child according to Beauvoir?

4. How does Beauvoir identify dualism?

5. 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?

(see the answer keys)

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