Truth and Being Laid Bare - The Use of Nudity in Philosophy

Overview

Context of   Truth and Being Laid Bare - The Use of Nudity in Philosophy project at University of Dundee

The meaning of the adjectives ‘naked’ or ‘nude’ depend largely on the noun they qualify, such as ‘naked truth’, ‘naked thing’ or ‘naked life’. There is ample use of these terms in the history of philosophy, though, as of yet, no systematic study of the actual impact or contribution of the term ‘naked’ to epistemology, ontology or philosophy as a whole. 

For example, Avicenna uses the Arabic word ‘tajrīd’, literally, ‘disrobement’ or ‘stripping’, to speak of an ‘abstraction’ or what is ‘abstracted’ (mujarrad); and following this, William of Auvergne speaks of abstraction as denudatio; Meister Eckhart speaks of God as esse nudum; Scipion Dupleix speaks of la nue entité as a way of expressing the Latin existentia in French; Descartes, famously speaking of a piece of wax, says Je la considère toute nue; and more lately, Agamben has spoken of la nuda vita; and Jean Luc Nancy of la nudité du sens.