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

2. How does Beauvoir suggest a child has a state of security?
(a) By virtue of his hopes for the future.
(b) By virtue of the adults who control his life.
(c) By virtue of his very insignificance.
(d) By virtue of the fantasy world he creates in his mind.

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

4. What does Beauvoir claim to protect the child from the risk of existence?
(a) His budding existentialist belief that only thoughts matter.
(b) His obedience to adults.
(c) The ceiling which human generations have built over his head.
(d) His inability to comprehend the consequences of decisions.

5. How does Beauvoir accuse Marxists of accepting moral superiority?
(a) By morally condemning any member of the proletariat who does not participate in revolution.
(b) By being suspicious of any bourgeois revolution.
(c) When Marxists find fault with their adversaries and charge them with cowardice, lying, selfishness, and venality.
(d) By considering any movement in which a Marxist is involved to be part of the revolution of the proletariat.

Short Answer Questions

1. How does Beauvoir explain the differences between the conditions of Western women from that of children?

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

3. How does the child's life begin actually become serious according to Beauvoir?

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

5. What does Beauvoir report to be the child's situation?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

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

4. How does Beauvoir define the serious man?

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

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

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

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

9. How does Beauvoir explain that willing bad is possible?

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

(see the answer keys)

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