‘Being therefore always of good courage, and knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord (for we walk by faith, not by sight); we are of good courage, I say, and are willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be at home with the Lord.'
So Paul is never permanently downhearted. His spirit is always strong. No threat concerns him. He is of good courage. It is true that while we are at home (en-demeo) in the body we are absent, away from home (ek-demeo) from the Lord, that is, absent from Him in His visible presence. For we walk by faith, and not by sight. We enjoy His presence by faith, even though we do not see Him. But one day we will be absent from the earthly, visible body and present with, and at home with, the Lord, something for which we are willing and eager. (‘With' is pros with the accusative which indicates close personal inter-relationship - compare its use in John 1:1). Then we will enjoy His visible presence. This in itself confirms that he does not see the state after death as one of nakedness. He would not have said that he preferred a state that he looked on with distaste. Nakedness without a body is a state he does not want. All this continues the thought of not looking at the seen but at the unseen.
So our present home is our natural, physical body on earth. But we have an addition to our home that we will one day in the future enjoy in the visible presence of the Lord, our future spiritual bodies which will arise out of what we are now. In 2 Corinthians 5:8 the verbs are in the aorist, indicating the once-for-allness of the situation.
The question in all this is whether we are to see Paul as speaking only of the resurrection body, or as also including our state when we die and are ‘with Christ' (Philippians 1:23) prior to the resurrection. 2 Corinthians 5:6 would suggest that both situations are in mind, without giving a clear indication of what the pre-resurrection state will be like. For it is the final state that matters.
One thing, however, he does make clear, and that is that even there we will not be just ‘naked souls'. We will not be unclothed. To him that would have indicated not being whole, and he cringed from the thought. We must finally leave the solution of this question with God, although there is possibly a clue in the verb ‘clothed upon'. When a man dies the physical side of his body drops off but the ‘seed' of the old, which becomes part of the new, remains. He is still in some way clothed in the renewed spiritual aspect of the old body.
And one thing that we can be sure of is that such a state was something that Paul looked forward to and eagerly desired, for he makes that clear in Philippians 1:19-23. It was not yet the best, but it was still far better until the best shall come. However the question of an intermediates state did not seem an important one to the early church for they were constantly awaiting His coming, and so it is spoken of little.