Friedrich Nietzsche & Existentialism Explained to Five-Year-Olds (in Comical Video by Reddit)

Who’s ready for a les­son on “Eggsalent­lal­ism?” How about “Exa­ten­talum?” Sound like fun? Great! Pull up a tiny chair, grab a toy, and get ready to have Niet­zsche explained like you’re five with “Explain Like I’m Five: Exis­ten­tial­ism and Friederich Niet­zsche.” A web series inspired by a sub­red­dit, “Explain Like I’m Five” has explained oth­er com­pli­cat­ed sub­jects to five year-olds, includ­ing the cri­sis in Syr­ia and the volatil­i­ty of the stock mar­ket. In this episode, our two pre­sen­ters prime their stu­dents for a dis­cus­sion on slave moral­i­ty with the ques­tion “who here thinks they’re a good boy or a good girl?”

All the kids eager­ly raise their hands, and after some Socrat­ic dia­logue are told that Exis­ten­tial­ism means “there is no uni­ver­sal moral­i­ty that gov­erns all of us.” I’ll leave it to the philoso­phers out there to assess this def­i­n­i­tion. The kids don’t respond well. They hate Niet­zsche. One vocif­er­ous young crit­ic pro­pos­es toss­ing him on the street and step­ping on him. Like good 19th cen­tu­ry Ger­man burghers, they can’t imag­ine a world with­out rules. I imag­ine these kids’ par­ents would also like to toss Niet­zsche in the street when their angels come home para­phras­ing Beyond Good and Evil.

Some of the pop­u­lar respons­es to Niet­zsche among adults can also be over­ly emo­tion­al. First there is fear: of the sup­posed nihilist who pro­claimed the death of God and who—thanks to the machi­na­tions of his unscrupu­lous and anti-Semit­ic sis­ter—became erro­neous­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Nazi ide­ol­o­gy after his death. Then there’s the enthu­si­as­tic embrace of Nietzsche’s work by unso­phis­ti­cat­ed read­ers who see him only as an anti­estab­lish­ment roman­tic rebel, hell­bent on under­min­ing all author­i­ty. Some of these impres­sions are valid as far as they go, but they tend to stop with the style and leave out the sub­stance.

What peo­ple tend to miss are Nietzsche’s sus­tained defense of a prag­mat­ic nat­u­ral­ism and his trag­ic embrace of indi­vid­ual human free­dom, which is not won with­out great per­son­al cost. The unusu­al thing about Exis­ten­tial­ism is that it’s a phi­los­o­phy so broad, or so gen­er­ous, it can include the anti-Chris­t­ian Niet­zsche, rad­i­cal­ly Chris­t­ian Kierkegaard, and the Marx­ist Sartre. A more seri­ous treat­ment of the subject—1999 three-part BBC doc­u­men­tary series “Human All Too Human”—also includes Mar­tin Hei­deg­ger, who actu­al­ly did truck with Nazi ide­ol­o­gy. The series, which pro­files Niet­zsche, Hei­deg­ger, and Sartre, begins with the Niet­zsche doc below (this one with Por­tuguese sub­ti­tles).

If you’re new to Niet­zsche, and not actu­al­ly a five-year-old, it’s worth an hour of your time. Then maybe head on over to our col­lec­tion of ven­er­a­ble Prince­ton pro­fes­sor Wal­ter Kaufmann’s lec­tures on Niet­zsche, Kierkegaard, and Sartre. For addi­tion­al seri­ous resources, Dr. Gre­go­ry B. Sadler has an exten­sive YouTube lec­ture series on Niet­zsche, Exis­ten­tial­ism, and oth­er philo­soph­i­cal top­ics. And if all you want is anoth­er good chuck­le at Nietzsche’s expense, check out Ricky Ger­vais’ take on the woe­ful­ly mis­un­der­stood philoso­pher.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Exis­ten­tial­ism with Hubert Drey­fus: Four Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

The Exis­ten­tial Star Wars: Sartre Meets Darth Vad­er

The Dead Authors Pod­cast: H.G. Wells Com­i­cal­ly Revives Lit­er­ary Greats with His Time Machine

Find Many Clas­sic Works by Niet­zsche in our Free eBooks Col­lec­tion

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness