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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. How does Beauvoir claim that a slave can exercise freedom?
(a) By showing expertise in a particular field to make his existence more valuable to the slave owner.
(b) By creating a world of freedom in their minds.
(c) By remaining ignorant of the consciousness of his slavery.
(d) By using their influence over other slaves to overthrow the slave owner.

2. What is the paradox with which Beauvoir closes Chapter One?
(a) In order to fill his existence, man must assume himself as a being who, "makes himself a lack of being so that there might be being."
(b) Man as an individual is, "At once alone in himself which makes up the mass of universality."
(c) "Man cannot know existence without first knowing his nothingness."
(d) Man is a being that, "in order to know the existence of achievement he must face the nothingness of failure."

3. What does Beauvoir identify as the spirit of seriousness?
(a) Facing the reality that the fate of all is the grave.
(b) Leaving the fallacy of materialists that only matter matters.
(c) Leaving the fallacy of existentialism that only thought matters.
(d) To consider values as ready-made things.

4. How does Beauvoir suggest a past accomplishment can be made relevant in the present?
(a) By comparing present acts to the acts of the past.
(b) By tracing the affects of the act from the past through to the present.
(c) By ceaselessly returning to it and justify it as part of the project with which the individual is currently involved.
(d) By keeping a record of all accomplishments to reflect upon those experiences with every decision.

5. In what way does Beauvoir consider nihilistic thinking to be right?
(a) In realizing that peace is punctuated by oppression and revolution.
(b) In thinking that the world possesses no justification and that he himself is nothing.
(c) In understanding the obstacles that come from a complex world.
(d) In understanding the future will be marked by violence.

Short Answer Questions

1. How does Beauvoir claim that the child develops the conviction of good and evil?

2. What does Beauvoir indicate can sometimes happen when there is a failure of the serious?

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

4. What does Beauvoir claim defines the "sub-man"?

5. What does Beauvoir claim comes, "...between the past which no longer is and the future which is not yet,..."?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Beauvoir claim that man can rise to a higher moral freedom?

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

3. How does Beauvoir show that the "sub-man" passes into being a serious man?

4. How does Beauvoir characterize Materialists?

5. How does Beauvoir define the serious man?

6. How does Beauvoir explain that adult lives can slip by in an infantile world?

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

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

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

10. What does Beauvoir detail as the consequences of failure to the serious man?

(see the answer keys)

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