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

2. In what way does Beauvoir claim that "The Ethics of Ambiguity" is individualistic?
(a) It provides the individual the reasoning to choose between being free or being serious.
(b) It accords the individual absolute value and recognizes him as the power of laying the foundations of his own existence.
(c) In that it comes to the individual to choose to follow them.
(d) By allowing the individual to withdraw from social life to gain moral perspective.

3. What does Beauvoir claim to be necessary to the desire for the slave to become conscious of his servitude?
(a) For the tyrant to leave the Aesthetic Attitude and accept the oppression he is bringing to others.
(b) For the individual who wants to make the slave of his position to avoid becoming a tyrant.
(c) For the individual to accept oppression for the sake of demonstrating how the individual can will their freedom.
(d) For the individual to break through the denial of the slave with a revolt against the tyrant.

4. How does Beauvoir summarize Hegel's view of the future?
(a) The future is organic because it is built on the lives and sacrifices of the past.
(b) The future is not stationary because the mind is restless and the struggle for the future never ceases.
(c) The future will only begin when the socialist state ends prehistory and begins real history.
(d) The future can only be affected if one accepts the validity of the projects they take as contributing to it.

5. What possibility does Beauvoir claim the fundamental ambiguity of the human condition opens to men?
(a) The choice of being and lack of being.
(b) The possibility of opposing choices.
(c) The choice of freedom over oppression.
(d) The choice of existentialism over materialism.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Beauvoir suggest to be the motivation of those who adopt the Aesthetic Attitude?

2. How does Beauvoir claim that oppressive regimes become stronger?

3. Since human life is finite, with what does Beauvoir suggest the individual should concern himself?

4. What does Beauvoir claim to be the meaning and substance of all action?

5. How does Beauvoir claim an individual can prevent life from being defined as an escape toward nothingness?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is the example of the conservative that Beauvoir uses to illustrate how tyrants will attempt to prevent revolt?

2. How does Beauvoir claim living as an existentialist would affect men?

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

4. How do societies attempt to help individuals hold onto the present according to Beauvoir?

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

6. How does Beauvoir represent the present in the face of the future?

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

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

9. How does Beauvoir relate death to life?

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

(see the answer keys)

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