Freedom lost its philosophical urgency once the 1960s liberation movements won.

Evidence

Above all, they asked about freedom, which several of them considered the topic underlying all others, and which they interpreted both personally and politically. In the years following existentialism’s decline, this topic went out of focus in parts of the world, perhaps because the great liberation movements of the 1950s and 1960s achieved so much in civil rights, decolonisation, women’s equality and gay rights. It seemed as though these campaigns had got what they wanted, and that no point remained in talking about liberation politics. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 96

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s broader interest in how political victories deflate the very discourse that produced them — echoes themes in the silence/soundscape reading about once-themes fading from attention. — connects to: Postwar Beauvoir reconceived freedom as porous and constrained by situation. — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 499; Liberties lose their critical force once institutionalized — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 106; The left’s abandonment of freedom caused its political decline. (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Liberties lose their critical force once institutionalized #expands (0.85) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 106
• Postwar Beauvoir reconceived freedom as porous and constrained by situation. #qualifies (0.75) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 499