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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does Beauvoir claim comes of an accomplished act that is left behind by an individual?
(a) It becomes nothing more than a fact.
(b) The act remains as an experience that lends to the development of the will.
(c) It has a diminished affect as time and spontaneous acts have different consequences.
(d) The affects of the act continue, but the act becomes forgotten.

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(a) An unpublished writer.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

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

4. How does Beauvoir introduce the role of God in the discussion of ethics?
(a) By pointing out that all ethics end up being an effort to define 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 suggesting the wide views of the nature of God actually makes God ambiguous.
(d) By pointing out that Sartre's view of existentialism ends with man attempting to make himself God.

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

6. What does Beauvoir suggest becomes the intellectual responsibility of existentialists who reject God?
(a) He has the responsibility of defining how works for self-benefit are also beneficial to his environs.
(b) He bears the responsibility to show his works for self-benefit do not affect others in his environs.
(c) He bears responsibility for a world which is not the work of strange power.
(d) He bears the responsibility to prove the lives of others have not affects on himself, starting with the union of his parents that brought his existence.

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

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

9. How does Beauvoir accuse Marxists of accepting moral superiority?
(a) By being suspicious of any bourgeois revolution.
(b) When Marxists find fault with their adversaries and charge them with cowardice, lying, selfishness, and venality.
(c) By considering any movement in which a Marxist is involved to be part of the revolution of the proletariat.
(d) By morally condemning any member of the proletariat who does not participate in revolution.

10. 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) He has the moment of moral choice.
(c) He faces the choice of repeating past mistakes or breaking from them.
(d) The world is no longer ready made.

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

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

13. 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.

14. What quote from Lenin does Beauvoir use to demonstrate the Marxist revolution has human meaning?
(a) "We say that our morality is entirely subordinated to the interests of the proletariat's class struggle."
(b) "The entire purpose of training, educating and teaching the youth of today should be to imbue them with communist ethics."
(c) "I call any action useful to the party moral action; I call it immoral if it is harmful to the party."
(d) "Our action only has meaning if it brings down the influence of the bourgeois."

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

Short Answer Questions

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

2. What irony does Beauvoir suggest contributes to the most optimistic ethics.

3. How does the child's life begin actually become serious according to Beauvoir?

4. What does Beauvoir claim to be the relationship between the serious and nihilism?

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

(see the answer keys)

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