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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 quote from Saint-Just does Beauvoir use to point out the paradox to the fight for freedom?
(a) "Power flows from the end of a gun."
(b) "If one wants to break from a hard ruler, he must become a hard ruler."
(c) "No one governs innocently."
(d) "Power abhors a vacuum."

2. How is Beauvoir asking each one to confirm their existence through the ethics of ambiguity?
(a) As a means to an end.
(b) By combining mind to matter through projects.
(c) By the transcendence of goals.
(d) As a value for all others.

3. What does Beauvoir claim is revealed through art?
(a) Art reveals that aesthetic contemplation at some point must make contact with time and space.
(b) Art reveals the transitory as an absolute.
(c) Art reveals the aesthetic qualities of the will of freedom.
(d) Art reveals that ambiguous principles of truth and beauty can occupy time and space.

4. What is the future that Beauvoir sees for herself?
(a) The infinite and as Totality, as number and as unity of conciliation.
(b) A reality which is given at each moment.
(c) The opportunity retrieve herself as beings in Glory, Happiness, or justice.
(d) That movement which will fulfill her present projects and will surpass them toward new ends.

5. How does Beauvoir claim an individual can put himself on the plane of the universal and the infinite?
(a) By considering a system abstractly and theoretically.
(b) By taking goals that will transcend their lives.
(c) By considering the ambiguity of their decisions.
(d) By assuring the means and the ends justify each other.

Short Answer Questions

1. How do ethics of ambiguity avoid being solipsistic?

2. What are the four items that Beauvoir identifies as the "indefinite conquests of existence over being"?

3. How does Beauvoir explain that technics (technology) is not objectively justified?

4. How does Beauvoir suggest that the ends can justify the means.

5. Why does Beauvoir suggest that if man waits for universal peace to establish his existence validly, he will wait indefinitely?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does Beauvoir mean with the phrase "Antinomies of Action"?

2. How does Beauvoir dispute the idea that individual freedom does not lead to anarchy?

3. How does Beauvoir criticize the claim that life is absurdity?

4. What does Beauvoir claim becomes of those who adopt the Aesthetic Attitude?

5. How does Beauvoir claim that we can best secure our personal freedom?

6. How does the individual who claims to have adopted the Aesthetic Attitude view historical work, according to Beauvoir?

7. What two views of how history affects the future does Beauvoir note?

8. How does Beauvoir define the Aesthetic Attitude?

9. How does Beauvoir characterize freedom that is won through denying freedom to others?

10. What is the one solution that Beauvoir offers to the oppressed?

(see the answer keys)

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