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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. If an individual does not inform a slave of his oppression, what does Beauvoir suggest of their position regarding tyranny?
(a) The individual who remains silent regarding tyranny loses his will to be free.
(b) The individual who remains silent regarding tyranny becomes a tyrant himself.
(c) The individual who remains silent regarding tyranny assumes the Aesthetic Attitude.
(d) The individual who remains silent regarding tyranny is complicit in tyranny.

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

3. At what point does Beauvoir declare the death of an individual is not a failure?
(a) When the cause for which he died preserves freedom for all.
(b) When it is integrated into a project which surpasses the limits of life.
(c) If the cause for which he died is carried on by his survivors.
(d) If his death leads to the victory of his cause.

4. How does Beauvoir claim that "The Ethics of Ambiguity" compare to the individualism of Christian ethics?
(a) Christian salvation is provided by an individual source as are the Ethics of Ambiguity.
(b) Both Christian ethics and the Ethics of Ambiguity depend upon individual devotion.
(c) Both Christian ethics and the Ethics of Ambiguity have their greatest influence on individual practice.
(d) Christian ethics dispenses salvation to the individual as the Ethics of Ambiguity depends on the individual accepting the nature of their ambiguity.

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

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

7. What does Beauvoir claim to be necessary to the desire for the slave to become conscious of his servitude?
(a) For the tyrant to leave the Aesthetic Attitude and accept the oppression he is bringing to others.
(b) For the individual who wants to make the slave of his position to avoid becoming a tyrant.
(c) For the individual to accept oppression for the sake of demonstrating how the individual can will their freedom.
(d) For the individual to break through the denial of the slave with a revolt against the tyrant.

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

9. What does Beauvoir suggest of movements whose means of achieving a goal contradicts the goal?
(a) The individual who takes such an approach will become a politician.
(b) The action will set off a chain of events that will negate the goal.
(c) The whole enterprise sinks into absurdity.
(d) The goal and the individual will be disregarded.

10. What does Beauvoir claim an individual must do to conquer an enemy with violence?
(a) Adopt the Aesthetic Attitude.
(b) Recognize that the use of violence will be met with the same.
(c) Reduce the enemy and the self to things.
(d) Subject freedom to demands for violence.

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

12. What influence does Beauvoir claim revolt has on the world.
(a) Revolt does not wish to be integrated, but to break the world's continuity.
(b) Revolt affects even those who have adopted the Aesthetic Attitude and forces the realities of the world on every man.
(c) Revolt rises from the recognition of oppression and brings freedom to the world.
(d) Revolt rises from a detachment from things and eventually leads to oppression through the desire to control things.

13. How does Beauvoir suggest violent action against oppression becomes a contradiction to the cause of freedom?
(a) Because those who fight oppression generally desire the power of those they attempt to overthrow.
(b) Because conquering enemies requires reducing the enemies to things and those who fight oppression must reduce themselves to things as well.
(c) Because those who see oppressors as being beneficial will believe they fight for freedom in defense of an oppressor.
(d) Because those who fight oppression must oppress those who fight with them to command the battle.

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

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

Short Answer Questions

1. When an individual aims at a goal that will be achieved beyond his own death, what does Beauvoir claim the individual should expect from the time given to the goal?

2. What does Beauvoir claim to be the only solution for those who are oppressed?

3. Why does Beauvoir claim that no project can be considered to be purely contemplative?

4. How does Beauvoir compare the present to the future?

5. How does Beauvoir claim to be the only means by which the present can retrieve itself?

(see the answer keys)

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