NATURISM. - It is a general orientation of the human spirit characterized by the constant concern to follow nature, positively excluding, or merely ignoring, every consideration of whatever is transcendent. N. is a mentality, a forma mentis affecting every field of human cognitive or practical activity: one may therefore have n. in art (verismo), in religious and philosophical thought (naturalism), in economics (physiocracy), in legal theory (natural law), in ethical life (moral naturalism), and even in ascetic life (Pelagianism, Americanism).
At present, the name n. tends properly to designate a social movement with a medical-hygienic background, arising in reaction to the artificiality of an excessively mechanized and urban society, while the name naturalism is reserved for other cultural and practical movements.
The contemporary naturist current seeks to achieve a simpler way of life, based on the results of modern biology. Linking itself with the Hippocratic doctrine of « healing nature » and with the synthetic approach introduced by the physician of Cos in the treatment of illness, naturist physicians oppose overly refined foods, advocating a largely vegetarian diet; they oppose unhygienic fashion, advocating healthy garments, non-deforming and not excessive in quantity. They aim not so much to cure diseases as to prevent their onset, removing, through simple treatments and suitable diets, those organic disharmonies that would give rise to pathological conditions. The most representative names of this current are the Rev. Sebastiano Kneipp, Birker-Brenner, and Dr. Paul Carton. Recently (1931), the Italian Naturist Union (U.N.I.) was also founded in Milan, with its own journal: L'idea naturista (since 1931).
It should be borne in mind that the ideal of naturists is not animal life according to the dictates of pure instinct, but the harmonious development of the human person both in body and in spirit, precisely in accordance with the completeness of human nature. This stands in direct opposition to nudism, which, given its affinities with n., strives to confuse itself with it in order to lend support, through the soundness of certain naturist views, to a tendency alien to true human nature: the animalizing tendency.
NUDISM. - Nudism, in fact, represents a myopic and one-sided view of n., and against it rise the naturist physicians, foremost among them the leader of French n., P. Carton. Nudism is a system of doctrines and practices aimed at spreading nudity as the most appropriate means of physically and morally improving humanity. It also claims to possess a theoretical framework and is indeed the manifestation of a mentality formed in the Rousseauian, positivist and materialist, Nietzschean and Freudian schools, which draws the ultimate conclusions, coinciding in its results with the postulates of the erotic fever of contemporary society. Certainly, nudist phenomena have often appeared in history: from the Adamites of the early centuries of the Common Era to the Turlupins of the 14th century, down to the experiments of Villars (1925); but what is symptomatic is the great spread it experienced from 1930, first in Germany (where there was a period of revival even after the Second World War), then in France, and subsequently in the Anglo-Saxon countries, with the formation of groups devoted to nudist propaganda and practice, such as, for example, the Berlin groups Pelagianer-Bund, Lichtfreude, and those of the Seine belonging to the Durville brothers.
The main tenets of the nude-naturist conception consist in a materialistic view of man, according to which no norm should prevent the fulfilment of instinctive tendencies, so that even in the sexual sphere modesty would be an irrational taboo of remote and superstitious ages. It is further maintained that nudity is immoral because of the morbid curiosity of the two sexes, a curiosity aroused by clothing and which would disappear if clothing were abolished. The usefulness of nudity is confirmed by the organism’s need to benefit from heliotherapy. The contradiction inherent in nudist moralism is evident, since clothing itself has the purpose of softening impressions which, if violent, would lead to the violation of the moral law. It is easily shown, on the other hand, that modesty has a primary biological-social and individual function, and that, although heliotherapy brings undeniable advantages to the organism, it is neither necessary nor advisable for this purpose to be entirely without covering.
Nudism must be regarded as an aberration deriving from a false conception of life and as a symptom of a decline in civilization. The psychologist Howard C. Warren concludes one of his reports on nudism with the doubt that nudism may be a form of « visual ribaldry »: certainly, the tendency toward nudity constitutes an effect and, from a different point of view, a cause of the aphrodisia of modern society.