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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. What does Beauvoir indicate can sometimes happen when there is a failure of the serious?

2. How does Beauvoir characterize the purpose of the body?

3. To what conclusion to Beauvoir arrive regarding Sartre's internal choices that are affected by personal passions?

4. What does Beauvoir call pursuing the movement toward an end despite the obstacle of certain failure?

5. What is the illustration Beauvoir uses to prove her assertion of stubbornness in the face of impossibility?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. How does Beauvoir characterize Materialists?

3. What faces the adolescent who is being liberated from the infantile world, according to Beauvoir?

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

5. How does Beauvoir claim that man can rise to a higher moral freedom?

6. How does Beauvoir claim one can avoid nihilism?

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

8. How does Beauvoir claim that spontaneity affects man's freedom?

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

10. How does Beauvoir define the serious man?

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

Beauvoir concludes her book with a defense that her ethical principles regarding ambiguity are individualistic. Support or criticize her position with statements from her book and evidence from personal experiences and history.

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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