The lowest rung on the ontological ladder are the things themselves.
Husserl promised us to go back to the things themselves, through the elucidation of their appearances within consciousness. The access to those things was through "essence perception" as the essences of the things was what supplied knowledge beyond mere appearances and our ideas of the things. The essences of things are the constraints that impinge upon the way the noematic nuclei appear within the appearances. The noematic nuclei are the external coherences of the appearances as we look at the same thing from different angles or via different sensory approaches. The essence is the static constraints on the way the appearances cohere within the noematic nucleus.
We might think of stuff as undifferentiated play of appearances.
Things are the noematic nuclei themselves without thought to their quiddity.
The entity (from ontos) is the participation of the thing in the underlying ground of Being. The thing itself to the extent it is rooted in Being is called ontic as opposed to the ontological which studies the Being within the thing.
When we look at the things themselves only with respect to their ontic constitution then we call them beings . So when we think about beings we have left all their characteristics behind other than their participation in Being.
Each being is characterized by it's whatness or quiddity which is its governance by the essence that constrains it's appearances within the noematic nucleus. The essence determines kind, sort, or type when we abstract the essence. The ultimate end to the abstraction of the essence is the production of the gloss of ideation.
We can talk about the kindness of beings. Beings have essences which we may abstract into types and sorts . But these abstractions of kind do not capture the essence of kindness itself. The essence of kindness is a meta-essence. In other words, just as things have essences so to essences have meta-essences in a regress. Essences constrain the noematic nuclei, but this is not all, essences are codeterminate in a web that connects different kinds of things to each other. The relation of kinds to each other may be described as kindness, in other words the essences interweave and form symbiotic relations that we call natural complexes. Many times we project our glosses over the natural complexes and obscure them.
Ideas are essences emptied of content. Thus ideas are pure forms . Forms are the outlines of things disregarding their contents. When forms are generalized they are called glosses . This is to say that they are summaries that leave out all but the key characteristics of the thing to be manipulated conceptually. These summaries are also called abstractions. A concept on the other hand is the fundamental insight that the abstraction is trying to portray. The concept is the nub of the abstraction or the limit to which it is tending. When the concept is itself abstracted then it becomes a source, in the sense that Plato talked about 'source forms'.
If we apply the calculus as a metaphor and remember Cantors hierarchy of infinities, then we can say that the noematic nucleus is constrained by the essence. When the essence is abstracted it becomes the 'simple idea' or the minimal idea that can represent a single essence. When this idea is achieved then we have raised ourself to the canopy of the first infinity. That infinity appears as an illusory continuity that forms the background on which the simple idea appears as a figure. Then there are many layers of infinities of greater and greater size as we build up the ideas into larger and larger complexes. But eventually we reach toward the concept which can be thought of as the limit of infinities of infinities and higher powers of infinities. The ultimate limit of this series is the absolute infinity whose limit corresponds to the source.
The noematic nuclei might be one example from a series of things that are of the same kind. We talk about an individual or instance from a class. But if we do not look at the thing as merely an example of a type or sort then we can see it in its raw givenness. This raw givenness is called 'thusness' or 'suchness.' It is indicated by reference as when we say 'this' or 'that.' The raw givenness of a thing defines it as an existent and the aspects of it's givenness are called concreta because they render the given thing concrete by the adumbration of it's particulars, peculiarities, individual differences, and other specifics that intrude from the appearances that go beyond what is given in the essence of the thing.
If we think about the actuality of the existent then we are coming close to the limit of what Kant called the noumena, that which is always beyond the appearances and never is shown. Actuality seems to be glimpses of the noumena. Kubler in THE SHAPE OF THINGS talks about it like a light house whose light sweeps the field of what is 'out there' and actuality is what is there when the light is not sweeping a particular spot. But in the sweeping of the light of presence there is the moment when the light first touches something that is 'out there' and that is what gives us our notion of it's actuality
Beings are defined by their
presence, their falling under the
searchlight that defines the clearing-in-Being. Heidegger thinks of
this like a clearing in the forest that lets the sunlight in. Actuality
is the dark shapes of the forest whether the light shines in or not.
Beings, however, are defined by their presence in the clearings in the
forest not by their absence from the light as are the noumena. For
Heidegger and Husserl what never comes into the clearing in the forest
does not have bearing ontologically and therefore is not ontic. When
the searchlight or the stream of light that breaks through the canopy
of the forest hits the thing then it fixes it within the showing and
hiding relations of presencing as purely present. This Pure
Presence of the thing is its
idealized participation within the
clearing-of-being. But this idealization is maintained by the showing
and hiding relations within the clearing when the search light of
attention moves from thing to thing so that if we watch the focus of
attention and the showing and hiding of things in succession then we
see the substrate of Process
Being that defines the dynamics
of what is happening in
consciousness. We also notice that in this process of unfolding within
the clearing there are many discontinuities and sharp transitions which
we may comprehend under the rubric of Hyper
Being. And finally when we
realize that ultimately there is a
mixture of continuity and discontinuity within the clearing, that the
clearing is not perfectly clear, or transparent but is actually mixed
up with the forest and full of underbrush then we may get a glimpse of Wild Being that
lurks in the shadows of the clearing. The clearing is not just an
island of order within the disorder of the forest but is a chaotic
mixture of order and disorder with fractal dimension.
Kubler, THE SHAPE OF THINGS