Before I start, I want to openly confess my love for the nude. Yes. Clothes are over rated. And, if it wasn’t such a social stigma riddled with culpable reservations, or in some cases just illegal, I would divest myself without scruple, or at least whenever the urge commenced to flower. My room temperature hangs perpetually in the 80’s so that when chance would have these urges overcome me, there is not a moments hesitation as to what to do. After showers I find myself too lazy to get dressed so I simply lounge about languidly in my towel. Nude is my preferred state of being. Its liberating and, as long as the conditions are opportune, very comfortable. I’m sensitive to the cold… which is why I think winters best bear earthly semblance to purgatory, in all its excruciatingly dull and pallid glory.
This brings me to another point. I’m reading an essay written by Derrida called “Animal Philosophy”. The essay begins by introducing an anecdote where Derrida encounters the gaze of his cat whilst in the nude. This invoked feelings of shame in Derrida. But why? Animals cannot be nude. Nude is a ‘technic’, a construction revolving around the feelings of shame. These feelings are due to our vulnerability to objectification by the alterity– or otherness. But where doest this shame originate? How is it justified? Certainly the cat feels no shame, for it is not in the nude. (cont later)
Regarding my continental philosophy essay exam: I’m nervous about delving into the questions head first because the subjects of deconstructionism and reversals and the phenomenological method are a bit dispiriting. I’m not sure why I’m experiencing this anxiety really. Perhaps its because I’m a little behind on the readings, and catching up is like taking trying to hew solid steal before its been heated for malleability. The understanding is resistant to the forces of change so quickly. Swift reading will simply not extrapolate the opaque strata of text. No. It must be experienced. Vicariously. It is the only way to form ideas about questions like: Can we speak of morality after the failure morality? Of course, the question that Levinass’ poses is in regards to the face of alterity. The face of the Others. The face, only encountered with humans, is authoritative and loving, and commands a political justification, separate from primary ethic. It is wholly distinct from knowledge, is fundamental.
And so the story goes… I will write more later.
William Dare 
This entry reminded me of Thoreau, particularly Walden’s first chapter Economy.
“Man has invented, not only houses, but clothes and cooked food; and possibly from the accidental discovery of the warmth of fire, and he consequent use of it, at first a luxury, arose the present necessity to sit by it. We observe cats and dogs aquiring the same second nature. By proper Shelter and Clothing we legitimately retain our own internal heat; but with an excess of these, or of Fuel, that is, with an external heat greater than our own internal, may not cookery properly be said to begin? Darwin, the naturalist, says of the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego, that while his own party, who were well clothed and sitting close to the fire, were far from too warm, these naked savages, who were farther off, were observed, to his great surprise, ‘to be streaming with perspiration at undergoing such a roasting.’ So, we are told, the New Hollander goes naked with impunity, while the European shivers in his clothes. According the Liebig, man’s body is a stove, and food the fuel which keeps up the internal combustion in the lungs. In cold weather we eat more, in warm less. The animal heat is the result of slow combustion, and disease and death take place when this is too rapid; or for want of fuel, or from some defect in the draught, the fire goes out. Of course the vital heat is not to be confounded with fire; but so much for analogy. It appears, therefore, from the above list that the expression, animal life, is nearly synonymous with the expression, animal heat; for while Food may be regarded as the Fuel which keeps up the fire within us,- and Fuel serves only to prepare that Food or increase the warmth of our bodies by addition from without,- Shelter and Clothing also serve only to retain the heat thus generated and absorbed.” (pg.8)
I love Thoreau!