By Schubert Ogden
The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden
On Transcendental Metaphysics
1.The Task
To work out just that utterly abstract, purely formal, literal(≡ transcendental) metaphysics (in the broad as well as in the strict sense of "metaphysics") that is both possible and necessary.
2. The Conceptuality/Terminology
Included in the conceptuality/terminology necessary to such a metaphysics are the following concepts/terms:
To speak, in a very general sense, of the "individuality" of an individual is to speak of its essence, its essential, as distinct from its accidental, properties. But as used here, "individuality" has a more restricted meaning, designating the essence, or the essential properties, of an ordinary, transitory individual only. Therefore, although it is entirely proper to speak, in a very general sense, of the "individuality" of the extraordinary, everlasting individual, also, it must be remembered that there is an infinite, qualitative difference between its essential properties and those of any ordinary, transitory individual. Whereas the latter are all on the lowest level of ordinary abstracts, the essential properties of the extraordinary, everlasting individual are all on the higher level of extraordinary abstracts, i.e., transcendentals, the concept of such an individual being, indeed, the transcendental in which all the others are unified.
The term "an existential," as used here to designate a property on the lower level of extraordinary abstracts, is nominalized in the same way in which Martin Heidegger norninalizes "eine ExistenziaL" to refer to an essential property of "an existent," as understoood in 2.12.
3. The Distinctions
Among the distinctions that a transcendental metaphysics would appear to require are those between: