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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. How does Beauvoir claim that the child develops the conviction of good and evil?

2. What is the focus of the adventurer?

3. What is the paradox with which Beauvoir closes Chapter One?

4. How does Beauvoir suggest a past accomplishment can be made relevant in the present?

5. Beauvoir claims that critics of existentialism claim that it is solipsistic. What is solipsism?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Beauvoir claim one can avoid nihilism?

2. What are two descriptions that Beauvoir gives to man at the beginning of Part I, Ambiguity and Freedom?

3. How does Beauvoir define the serious man?

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

5. According to Beauvoir, how have existentialists defined their philosophy?

6. How does Beauvoir claim an individual makes himself a "sub-man"?

7. How does Beauvoir explain the characteristic feature of all ethics?

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

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

10. With what quote from Descartes does Beauvoir begin Section II?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Beauvoir uses three stages of human development (childhood, adolescence, and adulthood) to explain the progression to free will. Summarize Beauvoir's thoughts on these three stages and give personal examples that prove her observations.

Essay Topic 2

Define Beauvoir's term, "serious man." What are the positive and negative aspects of this condition, and how does an individual move into it? Does modern society encourage individuals to accept this condition? How does the modern social view of the "serious man" affect the quality of freedom for communities, cultures, and nations?

Essay Topic 3

Beauvoir begins Chapter Three by explaining the social aspect of freedom and then details the affect of the "Aesthetic Attitude" on it. Examine the "Aesthetic Attitude", whether or not it has a positive influence on freedom, and what sort of individual detailed by Beauvoir (the sub-man, the serious man, the adventurer, the nihilist, or the passionate man) is most likely to adopt this attitude.

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