1452. To be real . . .

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1. To be real in the most general sense of the word is to be real for something else that is real in the same general sense. (Everything is real for something, and only nothing is real for nothing.)
2. To be ultimately real, then, is to be real for something, no matter what else mayor may not be real for it. And to be strictly ultimate in reality is to be real for everything, no matter what other things mayor may not be real for it.
3. There is a difference in ontological type between things that are real solely and simply in the most general sense that they are real for something else and things that are real in the more specific sense that other things can also be real for them. In other words, there is an ontological difference between the type of things that are objects and only objects and the type of things that are subjects as well as objects. 

4. As between objects that are also subjects, because they are not only real for something else but are such that other things can be real for them, there is a further difference in ontological type insofar as some of them can, while others of them cannot, be real for the same things that are real for them. The first type of subjects are properly called "individuals," the second type "events." Although both types of subjects are not only real for something else but are such that other things can be real for them, "events" are such that the things for which they are real are always different from the things that are real for them, while "individuals" are such that they can be real for the same things that are real for them. Among such other differences as may be involved in this difference in ontological types is a difference between types of identity—the identity of events being strict, while the identity of individuals is genetic.

5. There is yet another difference in ontological type between particular individuals for which some things are real and the universal individual for which all things are real. Of course, there is the corresponding difference between the two types of individuals that they, in turn, are real either for only some things, in the case of all particular individuals, or for all things, in the case of the one universal individual. (In the nature of the case, there is and can be only one universal individual, since there neither is nor can be anything to distinguish one universal individual from another.)

6. Yet another ontological type difference between individuals is the difference between those that are and those that are not self-understanding, and hence either are or are not capable of, among other things, developing the kind of transcendental metaphysics expressed by the present set of theses. All individuals are such that other things are real for them even as they are real for other things and that these other things can be the same things.  But only some individuals can understand themselves as being such individuals and, therewith, understand both the most general sense of what it is to be real and all of the ontological type distinctions covered by this most general sense of the word.

7. Of yet other differences in ontological type that need to be clarified one is the difference with respect to objects that are also subjects, and, therefore, both individuals and events, between singulars and aggregates. The difference between a singular and an aggregate is the difference between anyone individual or event, on the one hand, and any group of individuals and/or events having less subjective unity than any of their member individuals and events, on the other. 

8. A further such difference is the difference with respect to objects that are only objects, which may be collectively called "properties," between different types of properties, specifically, between transcendental, categorial, generic, and specific properties. Transcendental properties are strictly universal and therefore such that they must be real for, and so characterize, anything that is so much as conceivable, either regardless of ontological type differences or else allowing for such difference. Thus, e.g., the transcendental property of being real, because being real for something else characterized by the same property, is real for, and so characterizes, anything whatever regardless of any differences of ontological type. The same is true of any other transcendental properties that prove to be convertible with the transcendental property of being real in the most general sense of the word-such as—e.g., being good, being one, being true, being beautiful. On the other hand, the transcendental property of being a subject as well as an object, and so real in a more specific sense, is disjunctive with the transcendental property of being an object that is only an object. Accordingly, it is real for, and so characterizes a thing only insofar as one allows for this difference of ontological type. As for categorial properties, they are real, and so characterize such fundamentally different kinds of events and individuals as respectively mental and material, living and non-living, and so on. Generic properties are real for, and so characterize, less fundamentally different kinds, whereas specific properties are real for, and so characterize, the even less fundamentally different kinds of events and individuals. 

9. Taking all such ontological type differences into account, one may say that there is also such a difference between all concrete things, on the one hand, and all abstract things, on the other. The type of concrete things includes the types of objects that are also subjects, and hence the further types of events and individuals, as well as of singulars and aggregates. The type of abstract things includes the types of objects that are only objects and hence the further types of properties—transcendental, categorial, generic, and specific. Notwithstanding this difference in ontological type between concretes and abstracts, events alone are fully concrete, just as transcendental properties alone are fully abstract. Consequently, there is a sense in which individuals, though concretes, are more abstract than events, even as there is a sense in which categorial, generic, and specific properties, though abstracts, are still more concrete than transcendental properties.