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

Multiple Choice Questions

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

2. What comes of the man of action who does not recognize the ambiguity that appears during the pursuit of his goal, according to Beauvoir?
(a) He will lose sight of his goal.
(b) He will lose his ability to evaluate his choices.
(c) He can become a dictator.
(d) He will fall victim to the oppression he is fighting.

3. What are the two clans that Beauvoir claims to come from oppression?
(a) Those who enlighten mankind by thrusting it ahead of itself, and those who are condemned to mark time hopelessly.
(b) Those who escape into their aesthetic only to allow their oppressive ideas to penetrate reality and subject the freedom of others to mechanically toil to satisfy their needs.
(c) The oppressors and the oppressed.
(d) Those who believe their status allows them the freedom to oppress and those whose freedom is taken for the benefit of those of status.

4. What quote from Saint-Just does Beauvoir use to point out the paradox to the fight for freedom?
(a) "No one governs innocently."
(b) "Power abhors a vacuum."
(c) "Power flows from the end of a gun."
(d) "If one wants to break from a hard ruler, he must become a hard ruler."

5. What does Beauvoir mean when she refers to "The Antinomies of Action"?
(a) That often in the fight for or against oppression, the action contradicts the motivation.
(b) That the intentions of the those who act against oppression must be constantly in check.
(c) That actions, not words, are most effective against oppression.
(d) That improper actions against oppression will lead to more oppression.

6. What are the two meanings that Beauvoir gives to the word future.
(a) Future is both a speculation and a target.
(b) The future is never here, but man is always moving toward it.
(c) It is the ambiguous condition of man which is lack of being as well as man's existence.
(d) Future is that which is yet to come, but is the substance of all projects.

7. What possibility does Beauvoir claim the fundamental ambiguity of the human condition opens to men?
(a) The possibility of opposing choices.
(b) The choice of freedom over oppression.
(c) The choice of being and lack of being.
(d) The choice of existentialism over materialism.

8. How does Beauvoir claim that oppressive regimes become stronger?
(a) Through ruthlessly enforcing law.
(b) Through indiscriminate violence that removes all pretense of freedom.
(c) Through being willing to kill allies.
(d) Through the degradation of the oppressed.

9. What is a flaw that Beauvoir claims some people make about their present situation regarding the natures of human nature and the present?
(a) Since no one can fully occupy the present, many obsess on either the past or on future things.
(b) Some serenely believe that the future is in the hands of a benevolent God, therefore they pursue no worthwhile projects in the present.
(c) Some believe that since the present conflicts with the nature of thought, that morality has no purpose.
(d) Some serenely think that the present oppression has no importance, and that oppression will be wiped out by itself.

10. How does Beauvoir claim that the individual with the Aesthetic Attitude regard his role in history?
(a) He considers history to have no affect on his Aesthetic Attitude.
(b) He considers his will to remain free to be the driving force of history.
(c) He considers himself outside of time, and does not belong to history.
(d) He considers his thoughts to form the existential material of history.

11. How does Beauvoir claim failure affects art and science?
(a) Failure has no effect on art and science.
(b) Art and science ignore failure.
(c) Art and science are set back because of failure.
(d) Art and science establish themselves through failure.

12. For whom do Beauvoir and Marx agree that the cause of freedom is most urgent?
(a) The unenlightened who does not realize their exploitation.
(b) To the oppressed that it appears as immediately necessary.
(c) Women who are unaware of the subjugation to men.
(d) The proletariat who is controlled by the bourgeois.

13. How is Beauvoir asking each one to confirm their existence through the ethics of ambiguity?
(a) By the transcendence of goals.
(b) As a means to an end.
(c) By combining mind to matter through projects.
(d) As a value for all others.

14. Upon what does Beauvoir claim existence is based?
(a) Freedom.
(b) Doing something.
(c) Goals.
(d) Ambiguity.

15. How does Beauvoir compare the present to the future?
(a) The moment that, when combined with the line of the past, defines the ambiguity of freedom.
(b) As that moment that quickly passes both into the past and the future.
(c) As only negative which must be eliminated as such.
(d) The only point in time in which the individual can come to grasp their reality.

Short Answer Questions

1. For whom do Beauvoir and Marx agree that the cause of freedom is most urgent?

2. How does Beauvoir claim an individual can put himself on the plane of the universal and the infinite?

3. What example did Beauvoir use to show how those who fight for a cause will come to accept certain contradictions.

4. According to Beauvoir, what stops an individual's life from appearing as a negligible thing?

5. How do ethics of ambiguity avoid being solipsistic?

(see the answer keys)

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