The Problem for Nominalism

 More and more in recent years, I have become increasingly and even radically nominalist in my thinking. I cannot fathom how love in any meaningful sense "exists." I can experience acts of love--acts that fulfill my idea of love. I can call something good or even evil. But I can't take the next step and say that love or good or evil "exists." Actions exist, or at least occur. If I name them with an abstract concept it is for easy or even possible understanding. I get to process them that way. I'm also compelled to lop off the crusts and carve out the mold, simplify and oversimplify because no act of love fits purely to my concept of love--or our shared concept of love. But when it's close enough, or when love is dominant or when I can't see what else is there or when I refuse to see what isn't there--when I need an act to be an act of love, I will call it an act of love, reconstruct it (re-present it to myself) as an act of love, build on what I've built, use it as an inspiration and a definition. None of this requires love to exist as such. Only actions and my need to understand, as I collect all trees that have certain characteristics in common and call them "maple," without there having to be anything but examples without a form. I can posit, reconstruct an history, a common ancestor for all maple trees. But there are still only individual trees.

And yet--how then can I judge what should have been done? What was the right thing to do? I see a man lying in the snow, unable to get up. I should help him. How can I say this if I am not responding to an abstract moral code? How can I respond to that code if it doesn't exist? 

I can tell myself, that's just what I was taught. That's the idea conditioned into my by my personal history, family, church, American Protestant ethos. Another person without this would feel no such obligation, might even say, "but that man is an X. My people hate all X's. It would be wrong for me to help this man." Jesus had to tell us that the Samaritan was good who helped the man who was "other" to him. In Jesus day, love your friends but hate your enemies was standard wisdom. He had to tell us this was wrong. 

But unless I am willing to say he made it wrong by declaring it wrong, I have to entertain the idea that there is a right in this circumstance. 

It's easy to get out of this dilemma. But the price is extraordinary.