Snoopy Helps Explain Philosophy

Asher Moore called on Snoopy the dog from Peanuts, and Law rence Ferlinghetti to illustrate some basic attitudes of existentialists at a lecture Tuesday.

The warm response of the audience to his direct and informal delivery indicated the popular appeal of existentialism today, an area of twentieth-century philosophy alien to Harvard's Philosophy Department.

Moore, Donald Babcock Professor of Philosophy at the University of New Hampshire, described existentialism as a combination of elements from the empirical and idealist traditions. Existentialism views man both as an object in the world committed to his relationship with other objects and as an intellect estranged and withdrawn from the world.

"There is a distance between me and me," Moore said; the me which is a thing among others in the world and the me which is an impartial observer. "In so far as I am transcendent and withdrawn, my existential attitude belongs to the tradition of idealism; but at the same time, "this transcendent thing must exist, be a thing there, rooted in the world," Moore insisted.

The existentialist, when talking about "engagement" or the distance between me and me," uses words which "correspond to our experience of the world," Moore said. Linguistic philosophers, on the other hand, have denied that existential terminology accurately describes man's experience in the world.

"In the sense that I am withdrawn," Moore continued, "I also want to go back to the thing I am, the thing I identify myself with embrace, and care for--something concrete, active, and committed as opposed to an impersonal intellect."

Moore showed a Peanuts cartoon depicting an icicle about to fall on Snoopy's doghouse; "I'm too ME too die," Snoopy wails, illustrating the existentialist's positive commitment. Turning to the poetry of the beat generation, Moore quoted Ferlinghetti to illistrate an exaggerated interpretation of the existentialist emphasis on activity. The poem described a young virgin wearing only a bird's nest in "a very existential place."

Moore linked the "philosophical attitude" of existentialism to the questions of traditional philosophy.