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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Why does Beauvoir claim that some individuals have lives that slip into an infantile world?
(a) Because the labor they choose prevents them from using their minds.
(b) Because they discover they are incompetent in the direction they choose for their lives.
(c) Because they are kept in a state of servitude and ignorance and have no means of breaking the ceiling which is over their heads.
(d) Because they never leave the fanciful world they create in their minds.

2. Upon what does Beauvoir claim that a child's freedom is based?
(a) Upon ignorance that makes all his decisions meaningless.
(b) Upon adults whom he is only to respect and obey.
(c) Upon his inability to grasp the concept of cause and effect.
(d) Upon his willingness to trust adults without question.

3. How does Beauvoir define nihilism?
(a) Nihilism is the point of nothingness that is felt at the point that the serious man reaches his goals.
(b) Nihilism is the point at which existentialists realize that reality is not framed by their thoughts.
(c) Nihilism is the recognition of the sub-man that he has no purpose outside of what has been defined for him.
(d) Nihilism is disappointed seriousness which has been turned back upon itself.

4. How does Beauvoir consider stubbornness in the face of an obstacle that is impossible to overcome?
(a) As the beginning of innovation.
(b) As the seed of innocent hope.
(c) As that trial that brings experience.
(d) As stupidity.

5. What does Beauvoir suggest becomes the intellectual responsibility of existentialists who reject God?
(a) He has the responsibility of defining how works for self-benefit are also beneficial to his environs.
(b) He bears responsibility for a world which is not the work of strange power.
(c) He bears the responsibility to prove the lives of others have not affects on himself, starting with the union of his parents that brought his existence.
(d) He bears the responsibility to show his works for self-benefit do not affect others in his environs.

Short Answer Questions

1. How does Beauvoir characterize the response of Western women when the structures that shelter them seem to be in danger?

2. How does Beauvoir claim the condition of the world changes from child to adolescence?

3. In what sense does Beauvoir claim that every man is free?

4. What does Beauvoir state is the goal at which her freedom aims?

5. What relationship does Beauvoir identify between ethics and facticity?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Beauvoir claim that man can disclose being?

2. How does Beauvoir claim that spontaneity affects man's freedom?

3. How does Beauvoir explain that nihilism becomes the desire for power?

4. What does Beauvoir report that Sartre taught regarding the being of man?

5. How does Beauvoir characterize Dualists?

6. How does Beauvoir describe the difference between Marxists and existentialist?

7. According to Beauvoir, how have existentialists defined their philosophy?

8. How does Beauvoir claim that man can find truth in his life?

9. How does Beauvoir claim an individual makes himself a "sub-man"?

10. What does Beauvoir suggest to be a flaw in Existential philosophy?

(see the answer keys)

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