Concepts of Bareness (Nuditas) in Medieval Philosophy

Abstract

The Aristotelian idiom, according to which the intellect is a “blank” or “bare slate” before it has experienced the sensory world was also used in empiricist arguments during the Middle Ages. In this short inquiry, I examine the use of the adjective bare (or naked) in both epistemology and metaphysics, focusing on fourteenth-century Oxford and the theologies of John Duns Scotus (in opposition to Henry of Ghent), as well as on the Oxford Calculators Thomas Bradwardine and Robert Halifax. While the metaphysical notion of bareness developed along the lines defined by Scotus, it constituted a counterpart to the empiricist strand of the same notion and represents an intriguing episode in the history of metaphysics.