The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden

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Hartshorne argues that "the uniquely excellent way in which each category applies to deity and the less excellent ways in which it applies to the non-divine have quantitative and qualitative aspects. The non-divine illustrates the category in some relationships to others [or: in relationships to some others?], the divine illustrates it in all such relationships [or: in relationships to all others?]. Also, the non-divine illustrates the category in a qualitatively surpassable way, the divine in a way either unsurpassable or, in some categories, surpassable only by [itself]. . . . The contrast between 'all' and 'some' might be termed the extensional import of eminence. There is also the intensional import" ("Love and Dual Transcendence": 98).

Granted that it is indeed possible to distinguish such aspects, or, specifically, a "qualitative" from a "quantitative" aspect, what is the nature of this distinction? One way of thinking about it, I submit, is that the so-called qualitative aspect is itself quantitative, albeit at another level—adverbally quantitative, if you will, rather than adjectivally.

Thus the divine is eminently or unsurpassably inclusive not only because it includes all actuality and all possibility (quantitative or extensional aspect), but also because it includes everything in the all of actuality it includes and everything in the all of possibility (qualitative or intensional aspect). By contrast, anything nondivine is only noneminently or surpassably inclusive both because it includes only some actuality and only some possibility (quantitative or extensional aspect), and because it includes only something in the some of actuality it includes and only something in the some of possibility (qualitative or intensional aspect).

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