"Already during the early spring of '68, a new mood had begun to take hold. Rents were rising, post-colonial immigration was stirring public debate, some customs seemed increasingly outdated, and the postwar economic boom was slowing down. A sense of a nouvelle époque arrived with social unrest and a growing number of protests (Dorman, 2017). By mid-May, student demonstrations and blockades had taken over the city."
"Jean-Paul Sartre, one of said intellectuals, famously asserted that man, through his existence, precedes any essence, endowing him with a great freedom to self-define. In other words, there is no nature or program that confines the individual to a single definition of what it means to be human (1946/2007). Since no idea of human nature is completely fixed, one can choose one's life and break with the conventions and ingrained attitudes that surround them."
Paris erupted in May 1968 as student occupations, barricades, and tear gas transformed a campus protest into a nationwide uprising. Rising rents, post-colonial immigration debates, outdated customs, and a slowing postwar economic boom contributed to mounting social unease. By mid-May, demonstrations and blockades dominated the city and students rejected established authorities and intellectual elites while demanding an independent university. The movement sought to break with power rather than to seize it. Jean-Paul Sartre framed freedom as the capacity to self-define, and he described bad faith as denying that freedom by assuming predetermined roles and norms. That capacity for choice underpinned the movement's revolutionary spirit.
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