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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. How does Beauvoir suggest that the ends can justify the means.
(a) Only if the motivations of those taking action are on full display.
(b) Only if the end is completely disclosed in the course of the present enterprise.
(c) Only if the focus of those taking action are on the future.
(d) Only if those taking action consider the consequences before they take action.

2. What comes of the man of action who does not recognize the ambiguity that appears during the pursuit of his goal, according to Beauvoir?
(a) He will lose sight of his goal.
(b) He will lose his ability to evaluate his choices.
(c) He will fall victim to the oppression he is fighting.
(d) He can become a dictator.

3. What does Beauvoir suggest of movements whose means of achieving a goal contradicts the goal?
(a) The individual who takes such an approach will become a politician.
(b) The goal and the individual will be disregarded.
(c) The whole enterprise sinks into absurdity.
(d) The action will set off a chain of events that will negate the goal.

4. How does Beauvoir define the Aesthetic Attitude?
(a) The objection that only the isolated man is free.
(b) The belief that man can only be free by separating from others.
(c) The attitude that freedom can only be willed while being around others.
(d) The objection that man cannot will himself free because the individual is almost always free by being around others.

5. If an individual does not inform a slave of his oppression, what does Beauvoir suggest of their position regarding tyranny?
(a) The individual who remains silent regarding tyranny becomes a tyrant himself.
(b) The individual who remains silent regarding tyranny loses his will to be free.
(c) The individual who remains silent regarding tyranny assumes the Aesthetic Attitude.
(d) The individual who remains silent regarding tyranny is complicit in tyranny.

Short Answer Questions

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

2. What is a flaw that Beauvoir claims some people make about their present situation regarding the natures of human nature and the present?

3. What knowledge comes to the man who has known real loves, real revolts, real desires and real will according to Beauvoir?

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

5. How does Beauvoir illustrate how ambiguity affected Christianity?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

3. What is the main criticism that Beauvoir makes of the Aesthetic Attitude?

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

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

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

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

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

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

10. Why does Beauvoir suggest man's life must always be an energetic striving?

(see the answer keys)

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