The Impossible Nakedness

The outstanding French sinologist François Jullien (born 1951) in his book "The Impossible Nakedness" (2000) points to a fundamental but not obvious distinction between Western and Eastern worldviews: while in European art, from ancient statues to modern photography, the naked body appears as a phenomenon that is inherent and rooted in culture, in China Nakedness as a philosophical and aesthetic category is impossible. Its emergence implies "morphological" thinking, a striving to fix form as an embodiment of idea, that is, the very essence of metaphysics born in Greece. In Chinese culture, on the contrary, form is understood as something processual, subject to change, and therefore does not require a fixed gaze at the "naked," and thus, living body. By examining works of Chinese graphic art and painting and contemplating the impossibility of Nakedness, Jullien invites us to rethink our notions of truth, existence, and sensual experience as such.