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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does Beauvoir report to the the qualities of God that establishes moral standards?
(a) A moral code from God constricts believers to live within boundaries.
(b) A God can pardon, efface and compensate.
(c) A moral code given from God removes the demands from human minds to create one.
(d) A moral code from God contributes to establishing a moral consensus that directs thought.

2. Beauvoir claims that dualists use their basic belief to establish what idea?
(a) To embrace nihilism.
(b) To guide their adherents to prepare exclusively for the after life.
(c) To diminish the part of the self that cannot be saved.
(d) To seek to find life on other planets.

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

4. 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 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.
(d) That man is free to believe all things, but achieving them is subject to the physical universe.

5. What does Beauvoir require for an individual to genuinely desire an end in the present?
(a) A fulfillment of spontaneous desires over time.
(b) A desire for that end throughout his entire existence.
(c) A recognition of consequences that will come through the desired end.
(d) An expected manipulation of the material world through the desired end.

6. How does Beauvoir claim that Marxists consider man's actions to be valid?
(a) Only if the actions are in opposition of the bourgeois.
(b) Only if the man has not helped initiate his action by an internal movement or through free will.
(c) Only if the actions eliminate private property.
(d) Only if the actions support the revolution of the proletariat.

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

8. What does Beauvoir suggest becomes the intellectual responsibility of existentialists who reject God?
(a) He bears the responsibility to show his works for self-benefit do not affect others in his environs.
(b) He bears responsibility for a world which is not the work of strange power.
(c) 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.
(d) He has the responsibility of defining how works for self-benefit are also beneficial to his environs.

9. How does Beauvoir claim that a spontaneous action, or flight, can be converted into will?
(a) By recognizing the effects of the spontaneous act on the physical world.
(b) By assuming the project positively.
(c) By accepting the consequences of the spontaneous act.
(d) By evaluating the usefulness of the spontaneous act.

10. What does Beauvoir identify as the irony of the serious man?
(a) He defends the seriousness of his goals while disputing the seriousness of the goals of others.
(b) He claims that he freely chose his goals, but they are extensions of the structures that formed his childhood.
(c) He pursues his serious goals but finds them to be insufficient once they are achieved.
(d) He considers his goals to be serious whereas the free man considers them to be trivial.

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

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

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

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

15. What does Beauvoir claim a child can do due to his state of security?
(a) He can do with impunity whatever he likes.
(b) He can have all his needs provided without labor.
(c) He can choose a direction in which he desires to remove his ignorance.
(d) He can create the world he wants to exist.

Short Answer Questions

1. How does Beauvoir claim the condition of the world changes from child to adolescence?

2. What does Beauvoir identify as the paradox of Marxist thought?

3. In what way does Beauvoir consider nihilistic thinking to be right?

4. Why does Beauvoir claim that some individuals have lives that slip into an infantile world?

5. What relationship does Beauvoir identify between ethics and facticity?

(see the answer keys)

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