1427. Events and Transcendentals

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Events and Transcendentals

The extreme contrast between concrete(s) and abstract(s) is that between event(s) and transcendental(s).

An event is more concrete than any other entity or type of reality, even as a transcendental is more abstract. Therefore, just as the most concrete entity or type of reality is an event, so the most abstract entity or type of reality is a transcendental.

Events and transcendentals are alike in this, that both, in their different ways, are strictly necessary and imply one another. Events necessarily imply transcendentals, which are the class characteristics of the class of events as such. This class, however, is necessarily nonempty, since transcendentals, in tum, necessarily imply some events in which they are instantiated. Whereas abstracts of all other types may or may not be instantiated in events, abstracts of the transcendental type cannot fail of instantiation. Some events there simply must be, and any event must of necessity instantiate transcendentals, both convertible and disjunctive, each after its kind. 

As between these extreme poles of the concrete/abstract contrast, there are other entities or types of reality that are either less concrete than events or less abstract than transcendentals, without prejudice to their being properly classified as concretes or abstracts respectively. Thus, for example, an individual is less concrete, or more abstract, than an event (or a particular state of an individual). And yet an individual is a concrete, not an abstract, even if it may be said to be a quasi-abstract. Similarly, an individual essence, or individuality, is significantly less abstract, or more concrete, than a transcendental (as well as a category, a genus, and even a species). And yet an individuality is an abstract, not a concrete, even if it may be said to be a quasi-concrete. 

What, then, is the criterion of the difference between concretes and abstracts? Concretes of all types (i.e., events, individuals, existents, and aggregates) are really, internally related to other concretes, some of which they necessarily imply by a specific or definite necessity, others, by only a generic or indefinite necessity, while abstracts of all types (i.e., transcendentals, categories, genera, species, and individualities) are not thus really, internally related to concretes that they necessarily imply by a specific or definite necessity, but are thus related only to necessarily or possibly nonempty classes of concretes, any particular members of which they necessarily imply by only a generic or indefinite necessity. Thus, for example, a species necessarily implies that it is embodied in some individual, if only as a possibility. But there is no specific or definite individual as such that the species thus necessarily implies, since any individual instantiating it, or even including it as a possibility, suffices to embody it. Thus even if the specific essence were not to be instantiated in any individual at all—and this, in the nature of the case, must be possible, since the class constituted by any specific essence as its class characteristic is only a possibly, not a necessarily, nonempty class—it could still be embodied, provided only that it was included in some individual as at least possible. By clear contrast, however, any concrete is really, internally related to at least some other specific or definite concretes that it necessarily implies as such. 

The criterion of the difference between concretes and abstracts, then, is real, internal relatedness to other concretes, which in the case of all abstracts is, in one way or another, only generic or indefinite—because to some necessarily or only possibly nonempty class of concretes, rather than to any specific or definite concretes as such—but which, in the case of all concretes, is, in one way or another, specific or definite-because not merely to some necessarily or possibly nonempty class, but to specific or definite concretes as such.

13 October 1991; rev. 23 July 2002