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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What is the prime interest of everyday man?
(a) The world and what he can get out of it.
(b) Study and personal growth.
(c) The Darwinian drive to procreate the species.
(d) Himself and his potentialities.

2. To which school of thought does Husserl belong?
(a) Geomorphology.
(b) Rationalism.
(c) Phenomenology.
(d) Teleology.

3. Identify the literary device Camus uses in: 'Even men without a gospel have their Mount of Olives'.
(a) The device is an example of onomatopoeia.
(b) The device is an example of transubstantiation.
(c) The device is a metaphor.
(d) The device is personification.

4. Which philosopher claims that anxiety is at the source of everything?
(a) St. Augustine.
(b) Sartre.
(c) Aristotle.
(d) Heidegger.

5. How are myths given life?
(a) Through representations on Grecian urns.
(b) Through their coming true.
(c) Through human imagination.
(d) Through cinema and stage representation.

6. Which famous Frenchwoman was self-reliant?
(a) Madame Roland.
(b) Madame Bovary.
(c) Madame La Guillotine.
(d) Violetta Valery

7. Who believed that 'to kill God is to become god oneself'?
(a) Karl Marx.
(b) Both Kirilov and Onegin.
(c) Both Kirilov and Nietzsche.
(d) Both Kirkegaard and Camus.

8. Why are European cemeteries hideous?
(a) They are not maintained properly.
(b) Only poor art-work and sculpture is used.
(c) They are badly planned.
(d) People beautify what they love, not what they hate--and they hate death.

9. How does a man define himself?
(a) By his taste in music and literature.
(b) By his politics and personal goals.
(c) By his possessions.
(d) By his make-believe as well as his sincere impulses.

10. How does Camus summarize the actor's art?
(a) As the ability to represent faithfully.
(b) As an absurd illusion.
(c) As the ability to simulate absolutely.
(d) As dangerous counterfeit.

11. What is important about an actor's fame?
(a) Its illusory nature.
(b) Ultimately it brings displeasure.
(c) Its fleeting nature.
(d) The problem of paparazzi.

12. Once, how were the condemned spared the sight of the scaffold?
(a) The execution chamber was never lit.
(b) The condemned person walked backwards, with two priests assisting.
(c) The condemned person was blindfolded.
(d) Priests held a little painted screens in front of the condemned person's face.

13. What is a characteristic of wisdom?
(a) Living with faith and integrity and reserving judgement.
(b) Knowing when to take things on trust, as well as when not to.
(c) Being able to supply a rationale for any action.
(d) Living on what one has, not speculating about what one does not have.

14. What does Homer have to say about Sisyphus?
(a) That he was the wisest and most prudent of mortals.
(b) That he had no fear of Pluto.
(c) That he was an inept fool.
(d) That his heroic deeds ought not to have been punished.

15. Who liberated Death?
(a) The messenger of the gods.
(b) Persephone.
(c) The god of war.
(d) Eurydice.

Short Answer Questions

1. What would make man feel alienated in the universe?

2. What technique is employed by philosophical novelists?

3. What status does Camus give Sisyphus?

4. What are the condemned man's last words?

5. What is Camus' attitude to genius?

(see the answer keys)

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