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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 require for an individual to genuinely desire an end in the present?
(a) An expected manipulation of the material world through the desired end.
(b) A desire for that end throughout his entire existence.
(c) A fulfillment of spontaneous desires over time.
(d) A recognition of consequences that will come through the desired end.

2. What relationship does Beauvoir identify between ethics and facticity?
(a) Ethics is the ambiguous manipulation of facticity.
(b) Ethics cannot exist without facticity upon which to base them.
(c) Ethics are the spawn of facticity.
(d) Ethics is the triumph of freedom over facticity.

3. What does Beauvoir claim comes of an accomplished act that is left behind by an individual?
(a) It becomes nothing more than a fact.
(b) The act remains as an experience that lends to the development of the will.
(c) It has a diminished affect as time and spontaneous acts have different consequences.
(d) The affects of the act continue, but the act becomes forgotten.

4. What does Beauvoir claim matters to the serious man?
(a) Subjecting himself to the project that defines his ambiguity to himself.
(b) Setting a track to achieve a predetermined goal.
(c) Using his ambiguity to shape his ethics.
(d) Being able to lose himself in the nature of the object which he prefers to himself.

5. What does Beauvoir call pursuing the movement toward an end despite the obstacle of certain failure?
(a) Fighting through delusions.
(b) The act of denial.
(c) The stone pounding complex.
(d) The free movement of existence.

Short Answer Questions

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

2. According to Beauvoir, what is the goal of dualist teachings to their disciples?

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

4. What is the paradox with which Beauvoir closes Chapter One?

5. How does Beauvoir introduce the role of God in the discussion of ethics?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. To what does Beauvoir credit the development of many different philosophical world views?

3. How does Beauvoir define the child's world?

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

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

6. How does Beauvoir characterize Materialists?

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

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

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

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

(see the answer keys)

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