What Happens to Descartes's Oscillation in the Late Ontology?

Query: Does V&I resolve the Cartesian oscillation that Nature Course 1 identifies, or does the chiasm inherit it as a structural feature?

The Problem

In the 1956–57 Nature Course 1, MP identifies Descartes's inability to sustain a single conception of Nature as a productive failure: Descartes oscillates between Nature as exteriority (res extensa, infinite mechanism) and Nature as union (the soul–body composite, natural inclination). He names the second "irrationalism of life" and retreats: "Finality is man. The concept of Nature remains intact" (Course 1, p. 20). See cartesian-oscillation for the full analysis.

The oscillation is the space into which MP inserts his own ontology. But the question is whether the insertion resolves the oscillation or merely occupies it:

The Resolution Reading

On this reading, flesh is the concept that closes the gap. The body-as-mechanism and the body-as-lived are unified as flesh — "an element of Being" (V&I p. 139) that is neither subject nor object, neither res cogitans nor res extensa, but the medium in which both arise. The chiasm is the structure of this medium: "the chiasm, the reversibility, is the idea that every perception is doubled by a counter-perception" (V&I working note, Nov 1960). Descartes oscillated because he had no concept for the between; flesh is that concept.

Evidence for this reading:

  • Nature Course 3, p. 205: MP names "brute or savage being" as the positive term for what Descartes disowned — the lectures explicitly present wild being as the resolution
  • V&I Ch 4, p. 147: flesh is defined as "an element of Being, a general thing" — neither subject nor object
  • The "double nature" formulation of Course 3 p. 227 ("there are not two natures in it, but a double nature") suggests a resolution rather than a perpetuation of the oscillation

The Inheritance Reading

On this reading, the chiasm does not close the gap. It names the gap. The chiasm is "always imminent and never realized in fact" (V&I Ch 4, p. 147). If the resolution is perpetually imminent, then the oscillation is not resolved but ontologized: what was Descartes's failure to think the unity becomes the structure of Being itself. Being is the oscillation.

Evidence for this reading:

  • reversibility is structurally non-coincident — sensing and sensed never fully overlap. This is the positive reformulation of Descartes's inability to think the union
  • ecart as "divergence" is the positive structure of any contact with Being. Divergence is not a problem to be overcome but the medium through which all contact occurs
  • "This body that I am is never the body that I think, and it is only for God that they are bodies in the same sense" (Course 3, p. 204) — MP reaffirms the Cartesian split as late as 1959, but now it is a datum, not a failure
  • The November 1960 working note "Do a psychoanalysis of Nature" suggests Nature remains unresolved, requiring further analysis

The Dialectical Middle

A third possibility: the oscillation is neither resolved nor inherited but transformed. The hyper-dialectic — "dialectic without synthesis" — is precisely the structure that refuses both to close the gap (resolution) and to leave it inert (inheritance). The oscillation becomes a productive tension: the chiasm is not the union Descartes sought, nor the split Descartes conceded, but the structured non-coincidence that makes both perception and reflection possible.

This reading fits the Nature courses' trajectory: each course takes the oscillation deeper. Course 1 diagnoses it in Descartes. Course 2 finds it in animality (the animal body is neither mechanism nor soul). Course 3 ontologizes it as flesh: "there are not two natures in it, but a double nature" — the "double nature" is not a failure to think unity but a positive description of what unity looks like when it is non-coincident.

Assessment

The question bears on the architecture of the entire late ontology. If the resolution reading is correct, then MP has an answer to Descartes, and the project is (in principle) completable. If the inheritance reading is correct, then the late ontology is an ontology of permanent oscillation — which may be what ontological-diplopia already names. If the dialectical middle is correct, then the project's incompleteness is not accidental (MP died before finishing) but structural — the chiasm refuses the closure that a finished ontology would require.

The wiki currently leans toward the dialectical middle: chiasm, reversibility, ecart, and hyper-dialectic all describe structures of productive non-coincidence. But the question has not been explicitly posed in these terms. The Cartesian oscillation as a genealogical thread connecting the Nature courses to V&I deserves tracking.

Connections

Sources