Popularized existentialism supplied the counterculture’s vocabulary and impetus
Evidence
Gray was one of the first to note how a popularised brand of existentialism fed into the growing counterculture. It added its terminology and transformative energy to the great social change that ensued in coming years, with the rise of student radicals, travelling hippies, the draft refusers of the Vietnam War, and all those who threw themselves into mind-expanding drugs and a free-for-all spirit of sexual experimentation. A vast and hopeful idealism pervaded these lifestyles: these people were not ‘dry’, Iris Murdoch might have said. Whether they slipped volumes of Camus, Beauvoir or Sartre into their pockets or not, they adopted the double Sartrean commitment: to personal freedom, and to political activism. When the student protesters occupying the Sorbonne in May 1968 cheered Sartre (alongside a few cheeky catcalls, admittedly), this was what they were acknowledging. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 915
Categorization
- XREF: Directly extends the book’s running thread on how existentialism moved from lecture halls into lived political practice — the Sorbonne occupation is a key payoff moment. — connects to: Post-war existentialism thrived on the excitement of a shattered world — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 529; Postwar American tourism helped spread existentialism across the Atlantic. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 539; Existentialism sought lived experience rather than explaining it away through abstract systems — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 1025 (+3 more)
Broader Connections
- Existentialist concepts now operate as unlabeled common culture
#corroborates(0.85) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 1000 - Existentialism sought lived experience rather than explaining it away through abstract systems
#expands(0.80) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 1025 - Existentialism directly fueled the rights movements of mid-century
#expands(0.75) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 889 - Existentialist subject-Other opposition provided the framework for feminist analysis
#expands(0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 13