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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 seek to prove regarding man's mastery of the world?
(a) That the more widespread men attain mastery of the world, the more they find themselves crushed by it.
(b) Man's mastery of the world is futile, because nature is constantly changing beyond man's ability to contain it.
(c) With each gain to control his surroundings, man feels himself more insignificant within the immense collectivity on the earth.
(d) Man's journey to master the world is a quest to meet God.

2. According to Beauvoir, how is freedom present within the drama of choice?
(a) Before the realization that a choice must be made.
(b) Within the analysis that leads to a decision.
(c) Only in the form of contingency.
(d) In the moment before consequences are evident.

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

4. How does Beauvoir characterize the purpose of the body?
(a) It expresses our relationship to the world.
(b) It becomes the vessel that evaluates the harm or benefit of consequences.
(c) It enjoys the pleasures of freedom before consequences are manifest.
(d) It becomes the barometer that marks the move from child to adolescent to mature adult.

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

Short Answer Questions

1. What is the focus of the adventurer?

2. In what sense does Beauvoir claim that every man is free?

3. How does Beauvoir define nihilism?

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

5. To what does Beauvoir compare the "sub-man" in his relationship to ethics and facticity?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. How does Beauvoir define the serious man?

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

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

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

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

7. How does Beauvoir relate nature of man's existence to the past, present, and future in Part I?

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

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

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

(see the answer keys)

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