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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. When does Beauvoir suggest an individual might adopt the Aesthetic Attitude?
(a) During times of oppression.
(b) During moments of discouragement and confusion.
(c) During efforts of an individual to will themselves free.
(d) When he recognizes that his freedom is secured when he is not with others.

2. What knowledge comes to the man who has known real loves, real revolts, real desires and real will according to Beauvoir?
(a) He has reached transcendence.
(b) He knows freedom.
(c) He has no need of any outside guarantee to be sure of his goals.
(d) He has grasped his ambiguity.

3. Why does Beauvoir suggest that if man waits for universal peace to establish his existence validly, he will wait indefinitely?
(a) Because struggles for controlling the future by politicians will prevent universal peace.
(b) Because peace is not required to establish validity.
(c) Because the world has always been at war and always will be.
(d) Because it is man's reaction to war that establishes validity.

4. What does Beauvoir identify as the worst thing to be said for violence?
(a) It breaks people out of the recognition of their ambiguity by defining absolute consequences for misuse of freedom.
(b) It leads to our enslavement to tactics rather than thought.
(c) It begins cycles of violence motivated by revenge that removes freedom for all.
(d) It forces us to sacrifice men who are in our way as well those who fight on our side -- or even ourselves.

5. What does Beauvoir claim to be the violence committed by opponents to the Nazi occupation of France.
(a) To chase out their German occupiers.
(b) To inspire the nation to overthrow the occupation.
(c) To create a state of violence that made collaboration impossible.
(d) To defeat the German military.

6. What type of individual does Beauvoir claim adopts the Aesthetic Attitude?
(a) One who only contemplates his freedom while he is among others.
(b) One who detaches freedom from will.
(c) One who claims to have no other relation with the world than that of detached contemplation.
(d) One who uses his freedom to guide others to consider the world in detached contemplation.

7. According to Beauvoir, what stops an individual's life from appearing as a negligible thing?
(a) When the individual is set up as a unique and irreducible value.
(b) When an individual's life is set as a model for practicing freedom.
(c) When the individual sees his freedom as integral to his ambiguity.
(d) When the individual grasps the impact of his ambiguity on his freedom

8. What does Beauvoir claim is needed to make an ethical choice in a complex situation?
(a) A strong sense of ambiguity.
(b) Transcendent goals.
(c) Long analysis.
(d) Means that justify an end.

9. How does Beauvoir summarize Hegel's view of the future?
(a) The future will only begin when the socialist state ends prehistory and begins real history.
(b) The future is not stationary because the mind is restless and the struggle for the future never ceases.
(c) The future is organic because it is built on the lives and sacrifices of the past.
(d) The future can only be affected if one accepts the validity of the projects they take as contributing to it.

10. What does Beauvoir mean when she writes, "...festivals whose role is to stop the movement of transcendence?"
(a) Festivals become both a means and an end to obscure the meaninglessness of both the present and the future.
(b) The end has been set up as an end.
(c) Festivals take people away from their future ambiguity.
(d) Festivals marking a movement's success obscure the means used to attain the success.

11. What example does Beauvoir use to illustrate "...festivals (that) stop the movement of transcendence?"
(a) Noted festivals through history note the coming decadence and collapse of the societies that embraced them.
(b) The festivals celebrating the liberation of Paris exalted the end of the history of Nazi occupation of Paris.
(c) Christian festivals that have been implemented during pagan observations separate Christian doctrine from its literary roots.
(d) Pagan festivals that adopt Christian labels ignore the conflict between the two.

12. Why does Beauvoir claim that no project can be considered to be purely contemplative?
(a) Because projects are contemplated in the present to be completed in the future and become part of the past.
(b) Because an individual is continually projects himself toward something in the future through a project.
(c) Because projects are contemplated differently by others who act differently from their perspectives.
(d) Because a project requires putting action to contemplation.

13. In the challenge for those who suffer more than one oppressor, what answer does Beauvoir offer?
(a) The issue is moral, not political, and the moral consensus must be reached with at least one oppressor.
(b) Only by working with the least offensive of the oppressors could other oppressors be removed.
(c) Overthrowing the oppressors is a matter of opportunity and efficiency.
(d) Only by generating full support of the masses could any of the oppressors be dispatched.

14. What does Beauvoir claim is revealed through art?
(a) Art reveals the transitory as an absolute.
(b) Art reveals that ambiguous principles of truth and beauty can occupy time and space.
(c) Art reveals the aesthetic qualities of the will of freedom.
(d) Art reveals that aesthetic contemplation at some point must make contact with time and space.

15. What does Beauvoir recognize as the paradox that faces a man who is willing to fight for a valid cause?
(a) Man can only assure better life by causing death to those who would destroy it.
(b) No action can be generated for man without its being immediately generated against men.
(c) The only way a man can make an important gain is to sacrifice something equally important.
(d) Only sacrifice can lead to achievement.

Short Answer Questions

1. What are the two meanings that Beauvoir gives to the word future.

2. In what way does Beauvoir claim that "The Ethics of Ambiguity" is individualistic?

3. How does Beauvoir suggest violent action against oppression becomes a contradiction to the cause of freedom?

4. What three considerations an individual make before acting are abstract, according to Beauvoir?

5. What does Beauvoir claim to be necessary to the desire for the slave to become conscious of his servitude?

(see the answer keys)

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