in general on the left we're excessively nominalist, and it came about for good reasons, but it runs against real limits and there has to be more grappling and usage of the universal

which is like actually really fucking hard because i lied when i said the left is excessively nominalist, they're still stuck all over the place on confused and wrongheaded concepts: "freedom", "humanism", take your pick. deflationary and particularist moves in response are of course necessary, but

unfortunately that's usually where the development ends because the interlocutor isn't equipped for a proper rejoinder. but that leaves the debunkers in self-satisfied ignorance, trapped at the object level with no room to move

this is what i meant a while ago when i said "i'm too nominalist for my own good" because it sucks being stuck there, replete with inertia. all the viable conceptual apparatuses around me are not up to the task and i don't trust the ones that are peddled