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

Multiple Choice Questions

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

2. How does Beauvoir claim an individual can put himself on the plane of the universal and the infinite?
(a) By assuring the means and the ends justify each other.
(b) By considering the ambiguity of their decisions.
(c) By taking goals that will transcend their lives.
(d) By considering a system abstractly and theoretically.

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

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

5. How does Beauvoir claim to be the only means by which the present can retrieve itself?
(a) Through similar events through history.
(b) By transcending itself toward the permanence of future being.
(c) Through politicians who deny obvious truth so as to delay the consequences of their present decisions.
(d) By holding with an existentialist who has adopted the Aesthetic Attitude.

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

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

8. What example does Beauvoir use to illustrate "The Antinomies of Action"?
(a) If those who lead actions against oppression are not under continual scrutiny, they will plan insurrections for their own benefit.
(b) That the thinkers who can define the evils of oppression actually become oppressors by making people realize their plight but offering no action to correct it.
(c) Men who commit violence against an oppressor for the cause of freedom become oppressors themselves and must reduce the oppressor as a thing to be removed.
(d) That unwise action against oppressors taken without considering the future will lead to more vicious oppression by opportunists.

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

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

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 the individual sees his freedom as integral to his ambiguity.
(c) When the individual is set up as a unique and irreducible value.
(d) When an individual's life is set as a model for practicing freedom.

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

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

14. How does Beauvoir explain that technics (technology) is not objectively justified?
(a) Technics depends on science for its gains, but science only has purpose when it can transcend time.
(b) Technics makes the absolute goal of saving time and work of life, but life only gains meaning when time and work are spent.
(c) Technics too often aims at expanding freedom, but ends up causing individuals to be absorbed into the seriousness of projects.
(d) Technics can have significant benefit for projects in the present, but too often it fuels the desire to accept the Aesthetic Attitude.

15. According to Beauvoir, why does society exist?
(a) Society exists because like-minded people work to form institutions.
(b) Society exists only by the means of the existence of particular individuals.
(c) Society exists to distribute matter.
(d) Society exists because the mind exists.

Short Answer Questions

1. How does the type of future facing individual humans affect civilizations such as Ancient Greece and Rome, according to Beauvoir?

2. How does Beauvoir suggest that Christian charity, Epicurean cult of friendship, and Kantian moralism share the same point of views?

3. How does Beauvoir summarize Hegel's view of the future?

4. In the challenge for those who suffer more than one oppressor, what answer does Beauvoir offer?

5. How does Beauvoir establish the relationship between things and man in human action?

(see the answer keys)

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