By Schubert Ogden
The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden
There is a fundamental distinction to be made between different transcendentals, or properties of reality (= passiones entis). Some of them are convertible transcendentals, or convertible properties of reality (= passiones e. covertibiles), that apply to anything real in any of the ways or senses in which something can be real. Others are disjunctive transcendentals, or disjunctive properties of reality (= passiones e. disjunctae), that apply to anything real in one or the other of the different (and disjunctive) ways or senses in which something can be real.
Thus anything real in any way or sense whatever is also one, good, true, and beautiful, these all being convertible transcendentals applying to anything real regardless of the way or sense in which it is so. But anything real, one, good, true, and beautiful is also either concrete or abstract, the transcendentals concrete/abstract constituting one of the two primary pairs of disjunctive transcendentals. This means that if something is concrete, it neither is nor can be merely abstract, and therefore must be something real, one, good, true, and beautiful in the only way or sense in which something concrete can be any of these things, and not in the way or sense in which something merely abstract can be any of them. Similarly, anything concrete and singular (i.e., any event or individual, including any existent in the emphatic sense of the term) must be either divine or nondivine, the transcendentals divine/nondivine constituting the other primary pair of disjunctive transcendentals, which are applicable, however, only to concrete singulars. This means that if something is divine, it neither is nor can be nondivine, and therefore must be something real, one, good, true, and beautiful in the only way or sense in which something divine can be any of these things, and not in the way or sense in which something nondivine can be any of them.
Thus, although a concrete thing and a merely abstract thing are both good, a concrete thing is good in the way or sense of being intrinsically as well as constitutively good, whereas a merely abstract thing is good in the way or sense of being constitutively good only. Or, again, although a divine thing and a nondivine thing are also both good, a divine thing is good in the way or sense of being inclusive of all good things, actual and/or potential, as well as included in all of them, and therefore unsurpassably good. On the other hand, a nondivine thing is good in the way or sense of including only some good things, actual and/or potential, and of being included in only some of them, and therefore only surpassably good.
As for the primary pairs of disjunctive transcendentals, concrete/ abstract and divine/ nondivine, the referent of the first term in each pair includes the referent of the second term, even as the referent of the second term in each pair is included in the referent of the first. Thus the concrete includes the abstract, even as the abstract is included in the concrete; and the divine includes the nondivine, even as the nondivine is included in the divine.
The key to the first pair, concrete/abstract, is the distinction between being internally related to other concretes specifically or definitely, in the case of anything concrete, and not being so related, in the case of anything merely abstract. Because anything merely abstract is internally related only to certain intensional classes of concretes, which are either necessarily or only contingently nonempty, it is internally related to concretes as such only generically or indefinitely. The key to the second pair, divine/nondivine, is the distinction between being both internally and externally related, in suitably different respects, to all concretes and abstracts, in the case of the divine, and being both internally and externally related, in suitably different respects, to only some concretes and abstracts, in the case of the nondivine.
11 October 1991; rev. 23 November 1993; 22 July 2002; 1 September 2005
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