Cartesian-Sartrian Ontology of the Object

Morin's diagnostic name (recurring across Part II of her 2022 monograph) for the ontology — common to Descartes and Sartre — that both MP's late ontology and Nancy's materialism work against. Its features: (a) objects are strictly delimited; (b) objects have no inside, no depth, no agency of their own; (c) adversity is only a function of a constituting subject's project; (d) anthropomorphism is necessarily projection; (e) the "true" object is reached by stripping anthropological predicates (Descartes's wax; Sartre's spectator). The frame is also what Meillassoux's ancestrality argument presupposes — when MP's in-itself-for-us (PP 336) undoes this ontology, the ancestrality problem dissolves at its source.

Key Points

  • Common to Descartes and Sartre: Descartes's res extensa is the prototype — extension partes extra partes, strictly delimited, with primary qualities reachable by inspectio mentis. Sartre's In-itself in Being and Nothingness keeps this structure: objects are "without their own adversity or aggressivity . . . strictly localised . . . clearly delimited boundaries that give them stability and ensure that they remain in their place" (Morin Ch 5 §1, on BN).
  • Adversity-as-project: Sartre's most explicit symptom (BN 489): "It is because I am there and because I have made of myself what I am that the rock develops in relation to my body a coefficient of adversity." Adversity is unilaterally generated by the for-itself; no project, no adversity. See coefficient-of-adversity.
  • Anthropomorphism-as-projection: in the Cartesian-Sartrian frame, attributing human predicates to non-human things is necessarily projection — there is no way for the predicates to be of the thing. This forecloses both MP's cautious-anthropomorphism and Nancy's freedom-of-the-stone.
  • Underlies Meillassoux's ancestrality: per Morin Ch 4 §2, Meillassoux's reading of MP as correlationist works only within the Cartesian-Sartrian frame. Once MP's "in-itself-for-us" is recognised as a single category that dissolves the in-itself / for-itself partition, the ancestrality problem dissolves with it.
  • Morin's diagnostic across Part II: the term appears explicitly or operatively in Ch 4 §2, Ch 5 §1 / §2 / §3, Ch 6 §1, Ch 6 §3. It is one of Morin's clearest unifying diagnostics.

Details

What's wrong with the frame

Per Morin's various deployments, the Cartesian-Sartrian ontology of the object generates four false binaries that both MP and Nancy refuse:

  1. In-itself vs. for-itself (object-side vs. subject-side). MP's in-itself-for-us is a single category, not a yoking. Nancy's à-soi is the structure of the existent itself, not a subject-side fact.
  2. Primary qualities vs. secondary qualities (Cartesian-Galilean). Meillassoux explicitly wants to rehabilitate this distinction (AF 11–13, 115); MP and Nancy refuse — the style of the thing is at the surface, not behind appearances.
  3. Object vs. complex / personality (Sartre's flat object vs. MP's Lacanian complex). MP's thing has style, moral personality, behavioural traits (CPP 84, 172, 421; WP 47–48); Sartre's objects do not.
  4. Anthropomorphism-as-projection vs. anthropomorphism-as-encounter. The Cartesian-Sartrian frame forces (i.e., anthropomorphism is always projection); cautious anthropomorphism + Nancy's freedom-of-the-stone refuse (anthropomorphism can be encounter-of-resistances).

How it interacts with Meillassoux's ancestrality

The ancestrality argument (AF 9–10, 13–15) says: science speaks of ancestral phenomena that existed before consciousness (the universe's accretion, Laplace's nebula). Phenomenology cannot account for these without distorting their literal meaning — turning them into objects-of-consciousness rather than referents prior to consciousness.

Morin's reply (Ch 4 §2, via in-itself-for-us): the ancestrality argument presupposes the Cartesian-Sartrian frame. Only if you accept that the in-itself and the for-itself are separable ontological registers does the question "what was the in-itself before there was any for-itself?" make sense. MP's PP 336 in-itself-for-us is a single category that refuses this separability. The Laplacian nebula is "not behind us, at our origin, but rather out in front of us in the cultural world" (PP 456) — meaning that for a nebula to make sense at all it must be intelligible in relation to which a perceiver could be situated (not constituted by consciousness). Consciousness "always finds itself already at work in the world" (PP 456).

How it interacts with cautious anthropomorphism

Per Morin Ch 5 §3, the Cartesian-Sartrian frame forces Sartre's reading of Ponge to be a projection-failure: Ponge anthropomorphises things, therefore Ponge fails to escape consciousness; but Ponge wants to escape consciousness, so Ponge ends up "outside, staring at things, all alone" (MT 450). The diagnosis is correct given the frame. cautious-anthropomorphism refuses the frame: anthropomorphism can be defamiliarisation in both directions, an encounter-of-resistances, not a projection. The MP-Shaviro-Cohen-Bennett path is not projection because the frame that makes anthropomorphism = projection has been refused.

MP and Nancy's parallel refusals

Both thinkers refuse the Cartesian-Sartrian frame, but they refuse it differently:

  • MP's refusal: through the flesh — the thing has another side (depth, inside-of-the-outside, latency); encroachment is the universal structure of world; my body is of the world.
  • Nancy's refusal: through the limit — the thing is à-soi, exposed at its limits; the partes extra partes is the place of differentiation, not undifferentiated void; the law of touching is separation.

Both share the diagnosis (the Cartesian-Sartrian frame is what blocks); they diverge on the construction (encroachment vs. limit).

Connections

Open Questions

  • Does the Cartesian-Sartrian frame have other contemporary heirs beyond Meillassoux? Harman's OOO, despite its anti-Cartesianism, retains a version of strictly-delimited-objects-without-relations; investigating whether OOO is a third heir to the frame would clarify Morin's diagnostic.
  • Is Descartes himself fully committed to the frame, or only his successors? MP's tremblement cartésien (Saint Aubert SC 21, 38) reads Descartes as already unsettled by the unum quid; the frame might be a Sartrian-Heideggerian reception of Descartes, not Descartes himself.
  • Does Husserl belong to the frame? Husserl's transcendental subjectivity is on the For-itself side; Husserl's Wesensschau (essences via imaginary variation) is not the Cartesian inspectio mentis; the frame may not include Husserl, though Morin treats Husserl and the broader phenomenological tradition as needing to overcome the frame.

Sources

  • morin-2022-mp-nancy-sense-being — diagnostic across Ch 4 §2 (Meillassoux ancestrality); Ch 5 §1–§3 (Sartre + Ponge + cautious anthropomorphism); Ch 6 §1, §3 (Nancy's freedom + whateverness contra Harman). Master statement of the term at p. 109 + recurring.