Nude Humanity

Animals don’t wear clothes. We learnt it from early childhood. At three years old, you could keep asking why your cat didn’t wear “some clothes” [1]. You could even get a scientific answer: “animals don’t wear clothes because, for the most part, they are still restricted to climates where they don’t need them” [2]. If you are a little older, you may begin to ask yourself whether taking off clothes brings a man or a woman closer to an animal or even “crosses border” between a human being and an animal.

Once Jacques Derrida [3], a French philosopher, found himself frontally naked “faced with cat’s eyes looking” at him “from head to toe” [4]. He started thinking about “the property unique to animals, what in the last instance distinguishes them from man, is their being naked without knowing it”. The philosopher continued, “naked without knowing it, animals would not be, in truth, naked. They wouldn’t be naked because they are naked. In principle, with the exception of man, no animal has ever thought to dress itself”. It appears that clothing “would be proper to man, one of the “properties” of man”. “There is no nudity “in nature”. Then new questions arose: “Before the cat that looks at me naked, would I be ashamed like an animal that no longer has the sense of nudity? Or on the contrary, like a man who retains the sense of his nudity?” [4]

Leaving all these childish and philosophical questions aside, we can specify what indeed “distinguishes humans from other animals” [5]. The answer lies in the sphere of mind and it is not restricted to awareness of nudity. According to modern scientific studies,”mounting evidence indicates that, in contrast to Darwin’s theory of a continuity of mind between humans and other species, a profound gap separates our intellect from the animal kind”.

Abraham Maslow [6], an American psychologist, introduced the notion of peak experience, “the most wonderful experience or experiences of your life; happiest moments, ecstatic moments, moments of rapture, perhaps from being in love, or from listening to music or suddenly “being hit” by a book or a painting, or from some great creative moment” [7]. Peak experiences can be described “as moments of maximum psychological functioning”, when a person “feels more intelligent, more perceptive, wittier, stronger, or more graceful than at other times” [7,8].

Maslow considered “the taboos on nudity to be entirely a matter of folkways and customs rather than a matter of ethical or moral principle in any cross-cultural sense” [9]. He “had an established but purely theoretical interest in whether nudity would make people in therapy “an awful lot freer, a lot more spontaneous, less guarded” [10].

In the late 1960s, basing, in part, on Maslow’s ideas about peak experiences, it was supposed that nudism can be “a viable path to personal growth, authenticity and transcendence”. The therapy called nude psychotherapy was developed. The naked body was considered “as a metaphor of the “psychological soul”. “Uninhibited exhibition of the nude body revealed that which was most fundamental, truthful, and real” [8,10-12]. “Although nude therapy has an indisputable tabloid character, it is also rooted in a long-standing academic search for authenticity and ultimate meaning through science” [11].

Despite the controversy concerning nude therapy, it gives an insight that nudity does not interfere, but rather helps to realize the human potential.

Nude with cat on chair by angrylambie1 | Flickr – Photo Sharing! (Creative Commons License)

References
[1] Clare Painter, Learning Through Language in Early Childhood, A&C Black, 2005
[2] Question: why don’t other animals wear clothes?
[3] Jacques Derrida – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
[4] Jacques Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I Am, Fordham Univ Press, 2009, see also Critical Inquiry, Vol. 28, No. 2 (Winter, 2002), pp. 369-418
[5] What Distinguishes Humans from Other Animals?
[6] Abraham Maslow – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
[7] Abraham H. Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being, Start Publishing, 2013
[8] Margarita Tartakovsky, The History of Nude Psychotherapy – World of Psychology
[9] Jessica Lynn Grogan, A Cultural History of the Humanistic Psychology Movement in America, ProQuest, 2008
[10] Nude psychotherapy and the quest for inner peace – Mind Hacks
[11] Ian Nicholson, Baring the soul: Paul Bindrim, Abraham Maslow and ‘Nude psychotherapy’, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, Volume 43, Issue 4, pages 337–359, 2007
[12] Nude psychotherapy – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Anthropology

Terms of Use Agreements for some popular content hosting and sharing services categorically prohibit nudity alongside the racism, bigotry, hatred or physical harm of any kind against any group or individual, excessive violence, criminal or tortious activity (quoted from Photobucket.com Terms of Use Agreement) and anything like that. On the contrary, the more liberal photo sharing services very often seem to be overflown with tasteless close-up shots of human genitalia.

Ethology may provide a key to explanation of this state of affairs. The scientists have observed that there are species of monkeys living in groups, of whom the males act as guards practicing the specific “animal ritual”. They sit up at the outposts,  facing outside and presenting their erect genital organ. The most notable thing here, I think, is that the basic function of sexual activity is suspended for the sake of communication. Every individual approaching from the outside will notice that this group does not consist of helpless wives and children, but enjoys the full protection of masculinity (see W. Burkert, Structure and history in Greek mythology and ritual (University of California Press, 1982)).

It is the most powerful signal with respect to group hierarchy, but definitely distinct from the reproductive process. It is believed that the genital display is an important social signal by which the animals communicate and that it is ritualized and seems to acquire the meaning, “I am the Master.” (J. Mouratidis, The Origin of Nudity in Greek Athletics, Journal of Sport History, Vol. 12, No. 3, 1985)

In the case of humans, the similar behavior may occur in aggressive or threatening situations: It has been emphasized that penis-exhibition can have a purely aggressive role, and … may occur without erotic arousal, as an expression of aggression. The phallic sign may symbolize dominance and power. In ancient times it was also a gesture against the evil eye and disease.

In the early days of the human civilization, the nude body was considered as an incarnation of energy and power (K. Clark, The Nude: A Study of Ideal Art (London, 1957)). The belief that nudity acts as a screen which guarded man from many evils and at the same time provides with power and energy echoed in ancient Olympic games, but at present, for some people, it takes a form of exhibitionism. The another category of people tends to be extremely preoccupied with their “animal instincts” and still considers nudity as a form of aggression.

How close can you get? | Flickr - Photo Sharing! By vbratone