ABSTRACT
In the account of the Logic given in the previous chapter, it was shown that Hegel adopts an ontological model of concrete individuals which treats them as indivisible primary substances, by virtue of exemplifying a substance-universal, which cannot be reduced to a plurality of attributes. He therefore defends a metaphysical account of things which is undeniably holistic, and rejects the model adopted by the empiricists and by Kant, who had treated the object as a plurality of property-universals, intuitions, or simple ideas, and thereby reduced the object to a manifold of ontologically self-subsistent elements, which can exist outside and prior to their instantiation in the whole. Hegel's claim, therefore, is that because individuals exemplify a substance-universal, they must be treated as irreducible wholes, or substantial unities, and he cannot accept the empiricist reduction of things to a plurality, arguing that it is wrong to treat the object in this atomistic way.
