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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. In what sense does Beauvoir claim that every man is free?
(a) In the sense that he can choose his own ethic.
(b) In the sense that he spontaneously casts himself into the world.
(c) In the sense that he is free to end or continue his existence.
(d) In the sense that only consequences affect his choices.

2. How does Beauvoir bring into question the Marxist claim that pure proletariat revolution is generated by the proletariat class?
(a) That even a Marxist needs to make a personal decision to join one party or another.
(b) The Proletariat can be influenced by materialistic gain.
(c) Too often members of the proletariat seek to become bourgeois.
(d) A proletariat revolution is too often halted by various conditions in various locations.

3. What is a principle that Beauvoir states that an ethics of ambiguity will refuse to deny a priori?
(a) That "ethics of ambiguity" are as solipsistic as is existentialism.
(b) That separate existants can be bound to each other, such as individual freedoms can forge laws valid for all.
(c) That, by definition, "ethics of ambiguity" must remained undefined.
(d) That the most important element of "ethics of ambiguity" is to disallow them from defining the conduct of those outside their understanding.

4. What does Beauvoir claim to be the affect of rejecting any extrinsic justification for internal choices?
(a) Such rejection would also reject the original pessimism which she seeks to address with her work.
(b) Such rejection also removes the motivations upon passions are fueled.
(c) Such rejection would lead to the erosion of any social order that makes choice useful.
(d) Such rejection also eliminates any standard by which choices are determined to be useful.

5. To what does Beauvoir compare the "sub-man"?
(a) A dull book.
(b) A bad painter.
(c) A common laborer.
(d) An unpublished writer.

Short Answer Questions

1. By quoting Dostoyevsky ("If God does not exist, then everything is permitted"), what examination does Beauvoir make?

2. What comes to the individual at the point he begins to notice the conflicts of the adult world, according to Beauvoir?

3. How does Beauvoir compare women to slaves?

4. What does Beauvoir identify as the paradox of Marxist thought?

5. During their stage of freedom, how does Beauvoir claim that a child sees adults?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Beauvoir claim that the truly free will is produced?

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

3. What does Beauvoir suggest causes the infantile world to begin to pass away by adolescence?

4. How does Beauvoir explain the characteristic feature of all ethics?

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

6. Upon what basis does Beauvoir suggest that a man decides upon what he wants to be?

7. What type of adults does Beauvoir claim stays in an infantile world?

8. What are two descriptions that Beauvoir gives to man at the beginning of Part I, Ambiguity and Freedom?

9. According to Beauvoir, how does man cast himself into the world?

10. What does Beauvoir note has been claimed of the nature of existentialism as a philosophy?

(see the answer keys)

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