| This study argues that for Marion the phenomenology of Cartesian metaphysics is forever caught between the phenomenality of the idol (substance as simple nature) and the icon (substance as divine name), without deciding between them. I propose that in this aporetic conflict of phenomenality the irruption of the icon excites the redoubling of the idol. My argument has four parts. Part One investigates Marion's first monograph on Descartes, a commentary on the Regulae ad Directionem Ingenii that discerns therein a tacit debate with Aristotle. The debate concerns metaphysics: Descartes strips Aristotelian ontology of ou 'si &d12;a by positing an epistemology without Being, ambiguous as to its ontological status---a "gray ontology" that refuses to declare itself. I contend that for Marion this gray ontology commits conceptual idolatry, which fashions the idol of the Cartesian simple nature from the residue of the Aristotelian 3i&d12;&d5; dov alienated from its ou 'si &d12;a . Part Two examines Marion's second book on Cartesian metaphysics, for which the "white/blank theology" that prevents Descartes from deciding the final metaphysical foundation---God or the ego---stems from a piety to protect God's holiness against those who would compromise it. Unwilling or unable to adopt the late medieval theology of analogy, Descartes struggles in vain to integrate the immanence and transcendence of God to creation. Tragically, he stages in metaphysics a more virulent form of the very rationalism he opposes in theology. Part Three pursues the crowning installment in Marion's Cartesian trilogy, which uses Heidegger's model of onto-theo-logic constitution to interpret the Meditationes. Marion's appropriation reconstitutes the constitution as a redoubled onto-theo-logic: the white theology of the causa, the second figure of Cartesian onto-theo-logic, reprises within itself, as its onto-logic, the gray ontology of the cogitatio, the first figure of Cartesian onto-theo-logic. The white redoubles the gray by enfolding the gray within the white. Part Four explores the conflicting phenomenalities, idol and icon, of this redoubled onto-theo-logic. I also weigh recent developments in Marion's interpretation. The Conclusion compares the results of my study with the analysis of idol and icon as saturated phenomena in Marion's phenomenology of givenness. |
