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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. 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 thoughts to form the existential material of history.
(c) He considers his will to remain free to be the driving force of history.
(d) He considers himself outside of time, and does not belong to history.

2. What is the meaning that Beauvoir gives to Festivals?
(a) Existence attempts in festivals to confirm itself as positive.
(b) Politicians use festivals to obscure their oppression.
(c) Societies use festivals to exalt their virtues.
(d) Individuals in festivals attempt to escape the uncertainty of the future.

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

4. How do ethics of ambiguity avoid being solipsistic?
(a) Because it demands that individuals engage matter in the pursuit of projects.
(b) Because the means of an end often affect more individual than the achievement of the end itself.
(c) By the fact that the individual is defined only by his relationship to the world and other individuals.
(d) Because goals often transcend the life of the individual who initiates them.

5. What are projects according to Beauvoir?
(a) Activities in which the individual sacrifices freedom for achievement.
(b) Activities in which an individual works to affect others.
(c) Activities which define history.
(d) Activities in which the individual works toward a goal.

6. In the challenge for those who suffer more than one oppressor, what answer does Beauvoir offer?
(a) Only by working with the least offensive of the oppressors could other oppressors be removed.
(b) The issue is moral, not political, and the moral consensus must be reached with at least one oppressor.
(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.

7. What type of future does Beauvoir recognize of humans?
(a) Humans have a future of struggle.
(b) Humans have a future that is defined by their antinomies.
(c) Humans have a finite future.
(d) Humans have a future that is defined by their desires to will themselves free.

8. Of what does Beauvoir accuse political parties in their effort to control the ambiguity of the human condition?
(a) Glorifying war.
(b) Making contradictory statements to appeal to all people.
(c) Creating conflicts.
(d) Abuse of language.

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

10. When does Beauvoir claim that science acquires meaning?
(a) When science explains material properties of present conditions.
(b) When science can cross the boundaries of the physical to the aesthetic.
(c) When scientific processes prove phenomena that transcend time.
(d) When it is seen as a movement toward freedom.

11. What are some of the causes that Beauvoir points out that oppressors will claim to defend in their battles against those who try to overthrow them?
(a) Oppressors will fight to defend duty, honor, and country.
(b) Oppressors will fight for peace, freedom, and morality.
(c) Oppressors will fight in the name of civilization, institutions, monuments, and virtues.
(d) Oppressors will fight for prosperity, social stability, and security.

12. How will an oppressor use history to justify his oppression, according to Beauvoir?
(a) He will negative aspects of history that existed before his power was attained.
(b) He will subjectively use the past to justify his power.
(c) He will create new history to confuse his enemies.
(d) He will point out only past actions of his benevolence.

13. Why does Beauvoir claim one cannot assert that everything may be the object of contemplation?
(a) Because contemplation cannot exist without action.
(b) Because all action is combined with contemplation.
(c) Because the most notable events in history often take up action and forsake contemplation.
(d) Because man never contemplates, he does.

14. 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 grasps the impact of his ambiguity on his freedom
(d) When the individual sees his freedom as integral to his ambiguity.

15. What does Beauvoir note to be the objection of oppressors who are facing overthrow for the cause of freedom?
(a) By overthrowing their oppression, the freedom of oppressors is being deprived.
(b) Overthrowing the order of oppressors threatens to subject all to barbarism.
(c) Those who overthrow an oppressor are only seeking the power to oppress.
(d) Overthrowing oppressors will bring neophytes to incompetently administer the principles of law and justice.

Short Answer Questions

1. What are the two clans that Beauvoir claims to come from oppression?

2. When does Beauvoir suggest an individual might adopt the Aesthetic Attitude?

3. What does Beauvoir suggest of movements whose means of achieving a goal contradicts the goal?

4. What is a flaw that Beauvoir claims some people make about their present situation regarding the natures of human nature and the present?

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

(see the answer keys)

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