Deck 28: Simone De Beauvoir: Existentialist, Feminist

Question 1

By "ambiguity" de Beauvoir means

A) that all our words for women have multiple meanings.
B) that human beings are both immanent in the world and transcend it in consciousness.
C) that nothing can ever be definitively settled so far as ethics goes.
D) that it is hard to settle down and really be serious about life.

Answer 1

that human beings are both immanent in the world and transcend it in consciousness.

Question 2

Nihilism is

A) an attempt to escape from the ambiguity that we are.
B) forced upon us by the death of God.
C) the premise on which an authentic life must be built.
D) something "given" with the absurdity of the world.

Answer 2

an attempt to escape from the ambiguity that we are.

Question 3

Being serious about one's life

A) requires the virtues of honesty and courage.
B) means looking death squarely in the face.
C) is a way of hiding one's freedom from oneself.
D) is the very opposite of fanaticism.

Answer 3

is a way of hiding one's freedom from oneself.

Question 4

Value appears in the world

A) if only we look at it without prejudice, forsaking our own little projects.
B) as a correlate of human projects.
C) in virtue of the world's dependence on God.
D) in so many ways that no one can determine an absolute value.

Question 5

The fundamental project for human beings is

A) to live as much like an adventurer as possible.
B) to justify one's life independently of what anyone else thinks of it.
C) to reconcile ourselves to the absurdity of existence.
D) to justify one's life by becoming necessary to others.

Question 6

Violence, de Beauvoir says,

A) never settles anything.
B) is never justified, even if violence is done to one.
C) may be required to oppose oppression.
D) is valuable in itself as an expression of the will to power.

Question 7

Woman has become the "second sex" because

A) women are biologically weaker than men.
B) men have overcome the strong resistance to oppression that women have engaged in throughout the centuries.
C) Scripture tells us that Eve was made for Adam.
D) it has suited both sexes to have it that way.

Question 8

That woman has been defined as "the Other" means

A) she has been understood to have only a relative existence.
B) no one can understand her.
C) the very essence of woman is written in how she is regarded.
D) she needs others as they need her.

Question 9

Patriarchy

A) signifies the dominance of the male.
B) abolished the ownership of women.
C) began by chance.
D) began in violent revolution.

Question 10

What does de Beauvoir understand by ambiguity? And why is that a problem?

Question 11

How does de Beauvoir resist the attempt to make Pyrrhus' projects of conquest look absurd?

Question 12

Describe the serious person as understood by de Beauvoir. And why is it so easy to slip into seriousness?

Question 13

Why do I need others who are free?

Question 14

What should one do when some use their freedom to deny the freedom of others?

Question 15

Why is it that biology is not destiny?

Question 16

What is de Beauvoir's criticism of classical psychoanalysis?

Question 17

Characterize patriarchy.

Question 18

What is the key to the emancipation of women?

Question 19

Compare what de Beauvoir says about nihilism, seriousness, and adventurism to Kierkegaard's treatment of despair and Heidegger's analysis of inauthenticity.

Question 20

When Sartre and de Beauvoir (and others) were bringing existentialism to public notice in the 1940s, it was often greeted as a philosophy of gloom and despair. In the light of what you now know of de Beauvoir, do you think this is justified? Why or why not?