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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. How does Beauvoir suggest a child has a state of security?
(a) By virtue of his very insignificance.
(b) By virtue of the fantasy world he creates in his mind.
(c) By virtue of his hopes for the future.
(d) By virtue of the adults who control his life.

2. What is the point at which existentialism is opposed to dialectic materialism according to Beauvoir?
(a) Where revolt, need, hope, rejection, and desire are only the resultants of external forces.
(b) When the proletariat universally works to eliminate its class.
(c) Where subjectivity and objectivity become equally determined by the revolt of the proletariat.
(d) Where intellectual and bourgeois revolutions are considered suspiciously by the proletariat.

3. 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) He has the moment of moral choice.
(d) The world is no longer ready made.

4. What does Beauvoir seek to prove regarding man's mastery of the world?
(a) That the more widespread men attain mastery of the world, the more they find themselves crushed by it.
(b) With each gain to control his surroundings, man feels himself more insignificant within the immense collectivity on the earth.
(c) Man's mastery of the world is futile, because nature is constantly changing beyond man's ability to contain it.
(d) Man's journey to master the world is a quest to meet God.

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

6. During their stage of freedom, how does Beauvoir claim that a child sees adults?
(a) As physically threatening.
(b) As fanciful projections of their uninhibited minds.
(c) As divinities.
(d) As benevolent dictators that provide their needs.

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

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

9. 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.

10. Upon what does Beauvoir claim that a child's freedom is based?
(a) Upon adults whom he is only to respect and obey.
(b) Upon his inability to grasp the concept of cause and effect.
(c) Upon ignorance that makes all his decisions meaningless.
(d) Upon his willingness to trust adults without question.

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

12. What does Beauvoir claim to be the choice that comes to a young man after a long crisis?
(a) He can escape the stress of his existence or throw himself into the object that defines his goal.
(b) He either turns back toward the world of his parents and teachers or he adheres to the values which are new but seem to him just as sure.
(c) He can define his life through his choices, or avoid his choices and slip into nothingness.
(d) He can accept his ambiguity and move to freedom and ethics, or he can return to the shelters of his childhood.

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

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

15. 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) Time is required for the individual to understand that he is free.
(c) The individual uses time to manipulate the physical world to exercise his freedom.
(d) The goal of freedom is pursued and confirmed in time.

Short Answer Questions

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

2. What does Beauvoir identify as the irony of the serious man?

3. According to Beauvoir, what is the goal of dualist teachings to their disciples?

4. At what point does Beauvoir claim an individual has the ability to decide and choose?

5. To what does Beauvoir compare the "sub-man"?

(see the answer keys)

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