how do i explain the word "existential" to a 5 year old child?

Answer 1

I angst, therefore I am.

Existential means everything starts from within me, from my feelings. I have to shape my own life and only I am responsible for what happens to me. Whatever meaning my life has comes from within myself. There is an essential loneliness in this philosophy, because even though we connect to others, we all exist primarily within ourselves.

Can a five-year-old understand this? I'm not sure. The simplest way to explain, if you must, would be that existential means each person is responsible for himself, for his own life, for his own happiness. I would think this philosophy would make a young child, who is very dependent on his parents, feel insecure.

I like the "responsible" part of existentialism but overall its too relativistic for my taste. There is not transcendent truth, only each individual's interpretation of what is true. Not what I would be teaching my 5-year-old.

Answer 2

Should you? That's the first question you should ask. Only you can really answer that, but consider...

Existentialism is defined in simple terms as the questions, stresses and anxieties that are created by life, it's mysterious meaning, and the uncertainy of death.

Small children should be insulated from certain realities until they are mentally prepared to handle them. By defining existential at this age, you may very well be adding to anxieties about life that he or she is not yet prepared for. My recommendation, deal with existentialism when the child naturally begins to understand death, and shows signs of concern about it. Define it, if you must, in terms of something everyone has to work through, and then give them some tools for doing so.

Answer 3

Most 5 year olds do not have the capacity for abstract thought needed to understand the concept of "existential." You can tell the child that she or he exists, things exist, and when you start to think about why things exist, you are thinking in an existential way, or about existentialism.

Answer 4

First start with the root word, 'Exist' (v)which refers to something real or present in a place or situation. Then get to the Noun form of it 'Existence' meaning the state of being real or living, or being present. Then go to the word, 'existential', the adjective form of the word meaning something connected with living / human existence. The word has also a connection with 'existentialism' -- a theory that we, humans, are free & responsible for our own action.

Not worrying about the technicality of the meaning, give the child a general idea of the word as one connected with our living.

Answer 5

read this to them.
Existentialism is a philosophical movement that is generally considered a study that pursues meaning in existence and seeks value for the existing individual. Existentialism, unlike other fields of philosophy, does not treat the individual as a concept, and values individual subjectivity over objectivity. As a result, questions regarding the meaning of life and subjective experience are seen as being of paramount importance, above all other scientific and philosophical pursuits. Existentialism often is associated with anxiety, dread, awareness of death, and freedom. Famous existentialists include Sartre, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and Camus.

Existentialism emphasizes action, freedom, and decision as fundamental to human existence and is fundamentally opposed to the rationalist tradition and to positivism. That is, it argues against definitions of human beings either as primarily rational, knowing beings who relate to reality primarily as an object of knowledge, or for whom action can or ought to be regulated by rational principles, or as beings who can be defined in terms of their behavior as it looks to or is studied by others. More generally it rejects all of the Western rationalist definitions of being in terms of a rational principle or essence or as the most general feature that all existing things share in common. Existentialism tends to view human beings as subjects in an indifferent, objective, often ambiguous, and "absurd" universe in which meaning is not provided by the natural order, but rather can be created, however provisionally and unstably, by human beings' actions and interpretations.

Answer 6

Existential is where you're allowed to think for yourself because you're the boss of yourself.

Answer 7

You don't. If your child heard the word and asked what it means just tell him/her, "Wow. That's a word that is too hard to explain to someone who is as little as you are. Someday when you're bigger I'll explain it."

Answer 8

Make sure you know the meaning, then put it in a way a 5-year-old will understand.

Answer 9

Ask him the question, how do you know that you're here?

Then ask him not to answer, and to think about it for 14 days.

He will give you the answer after 2 weeks, and job done.

Answer 10

Why would you want to? Five year olds are developmentally unable to understand abstract concepts.