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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 a flaw that Beauvoir claims some people make about their present situation regarding the natures of human nature and the present?
(a) Some serenely think that the present oppression has no importance, and that oppression will be wiped out by itself.
(b) Some believe that since the present conflicts with the nature of thought, that morality has no purpose.
(c) Some serenely believe that the future is in the hands of a benevolent God, therefore they pursue no worthwhile projects in the present.
(d) Since no one can fully occupy the present, many obsess on either the past or on future things.

2. According to Beauvoir, upon what do politicians rely to sustain their influence over individuals?
(a) The guile and persuasion of well constructed statements.
(b) The power and brutality of police.
(c) A utopian view of the future.
(d) The subjective use of history.

3. According to Beauvoir, what stops an individual's life from appearing as a negligible thing?
(a) When the individual is set up as a unique and irreducible value.
(b) When the individual grasps the impact of his ambiguity on his freedom
(c) When the individual sees his freedom as integral to his ambiguity.
(d) When an individual's life is set as a model for practicing freedom.

4. What does Beauvoir claim an individual must do to conquer an enemy with violence?
(a) Recognize that the use of violence will be met with the same.
(b) Subject freedom to demands for violence.
(c) Adopt the Aesthetic Attitude.
(d) Reduce the enemy and the self to things.

5. What is the paradox that Beauvoir identifies in the fight against oppression?
(a) Peace and freedom cannot be won without first going through oppression and war.
(b) Oppression cannot be defeated with out oppression being applied.
(c) Those who desire peace and freedom are too often faced with the need to subject themselves to war.
(d) No action can be generated for man without its being immediately generated against men.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Beauvoir suggest of movements whose means of achieving a goal contradicts the goal?

2. Upon what does Beauvoir claim existence is based?

3. What does Beauvoir note to be the objection of oppressors who are facing overthrow for the cause of freedom?

4. How will an oppressor use history to justify his oppression, according to Beauvoir?

5. What type of individual does Beauvoir claim adopts the Aesthetic Attitude?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Beauvoir show that the complexity of the world affects those who are fighting for a cause?

2. What does Beauvoir identify as one of the chief objections leveled against existentialism with regard to freedom?

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

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

5. Why does Beauvoir write that the only way way that the oppressed can fulfill his freedom is through revolt?

6. How does Beauvoir define the Aesthetic Attitude?

7. What is the contradiction that Beauvoir states regarding the difficulty of living the in the modern age?

8. How does ambiguity affect man when he faces failure and outrageousness, according to Beauvoir?

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

10. What are the two meanings that Beauvoir gives for the future?

(see the answer keys)

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