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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. What does Beauvoir report to be the child's situation?
(a) He is subject to accept all things based upon what others tell him.
(b) His ambiguity is compounded by his ignorance of right and wrong.
(c) He is cast into a universe which he has not helped to establish and appears as an absolute to which he can only submit.
(d) He faces the reality that his freedom is continually reduced by his growing knowledge.

2. According to Beauvoir, what is the goal of dualist teachings to their disciples?
(a) To eliminate ambiguity from the after life.
(b) To eliminate ambiguity from extraterrestrial life.
(c) To escape ambiguity.
(d) To see the physical life as ambiguous.

3. What is the point at which existentialism is opposed to dialectic materialism according to Beauvoir?
(a) Where revolt, need, hope, rejection, and desire are only the resultants of external forces.
(b) Where subjectivity and objectivity become equally determined by the revolt of the proletariat.
(c) When the proletariat universally works to eliminate its class.
(d) Where intellectual and bourgeois revolutions are considered suspiciously by the proletariat.

4. How does Beauvoir compare women to slaves?
(a) By pointing out that women create an existence in their minds that escapes the reality of the world around them.
(b) By pointing out that women are subject to the laws, gods, customs, and truths created by males.
(c) By pointing out that women base their success on the contentment of their families.
(d) By pointing out that many women choose to be ignorant of the condition of the world.

5. What role does time play what Beauvoir identifies as the ability to will oneself free?
(a) Time is required for the individual to understand that he is free.
(b) Time allows the accumulation of spontaneous acts to define their direction.
(c) The goal of freedom is pursued and confirmed in time.
(d) The individual uses time to manipulate the physical world to exercise his freedom.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Beauvoir claim can come to people who are filled with the horror of defeat?

2. What does Beauvoir identify as the certain truth contained in the nihilist attitude?

3. What claim of existentialists does Beauvoir offer in defense of detractors to existentialism?

4. How does Beauvoir define nihilism?

5. How does Beauvoir claim that a slave can exercise freedom?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. What does Beauvoir point out as the difference between the passionate man and the adventurer?

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

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

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

6. With what quote from Descartes does Beauvoir begin Section II?

7. How does Beauvoir define the serious man?

8. How does Beauvoir claim one can avoid nihilism?

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

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

(see the answer keys)

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