By Schubert Ogden
The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden
1. Hartshorne speaks of "particular instances of a universal" ("Categories, Transcendentals, and Creative Experiencing": 327 f.). I assume that, in the strictest sense, only events are particular instances, even as only transcendentals are universals. At the same time, I assume that individuals are relatively more universal than events, while categories, genera, species, and individual essences are relatively more particular than transcendentals.
2. Significantly, however, Hartshorne also says, "Particularization and becoming are one. Hence there are no particulars or individuals in purely possible worlds. They are really only possible sorts of world containing only general kinds of particulars or individuals" (Ibid.). Here "particulars" seems to be used synonymously with "individuals," in which case "particulars" does not refer to events, or, at least, not only to events. This would be consistent with Hartshorne's expressed concern to do justice to the ordinary idea of an existing individual person or thing by stressing that an individual, though relatively less particular than the events in which it is actualized, is significantly more particular than the species to which it belongs.
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