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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Chapter 2, Personal Freedom and Others.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. How does Beauvoir define nihilism?
(a) Nihilism is the point of nothingness that is felt at the point that the serious man reaches his goals.
(b) Nihilism is the recognition of the sub-man that he has no purpose outside of what has been defined for him.
(c) Nihilism is the point at which existentialists realize that reality is not framed by their thoughts.
(d) Nihilism is disappointed seriousness which has been turned back upon itself.

2. How does Beauvoir explain that a child, himself, is not serious?
(a) A child is allowed to play and expend his existence freely to passionately pursue and joyfully attain goals which he has set up for himself.
(b) A child's thoughts are often fanciful and unrealistic.
(c) A child is not affected by the knowledge of things that have been established before him.
(d) A child is not aware that his fate is the grave.

3. What prevents a moral question from presenting itself to the child according to Beauvoir?
(a) A lack of perspective to see himself in the past or seeing himself in the future.
(b) Ignorance of consequences.
(c) The misunderstanding of spontaneity and affects.
(d) Ignorance of the physical world.

4. In what sense does Beauvoir claim that every man is free?
(a) In the sense that he is free to end or continue his existence.
(b) In the sense that he spontaneously casts himself into the world.
(c) In the sense that he can choose his own ethic.
(d) In the sense that only consequences affect his choices.

5. What does Beauvoir identify as the paradox of Marxist thought?
(a) "Marxist deny accepting morality while condemning all movements that do not accept their moral view."
(b) "From the moment a man recognizes himself as free, he is prohibited from wishing for anything."
(c) "Marxist deny desires for material things while devoting their revolution to taking material things."
(d) "The point at which the proletariat overthrows the bourgeois, they immediately attempt to become bourgeois."

Short Answer Questions

1. Who does Beauvoir use as an example of moving through such obstacles?

2. How does Beauvoir show how her example of moving through obstacles prove her arguments?

3. What does Beauvoir claim comes of the man who does not use his the necessary instruments to escape the lie of his serious life that prevents his freedom?

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

5. What does Beauvoir identify as the irony of the serious man?

(see the answer key)

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