Frank Kogan

"why do people think that the esoteric philosophical point is a big deal" -- i've tried to answer this before (very speculatively) as being an epiphenomenon of the institution of the university, which is a social construct in a slightly different sense, with a fairly particular history which "philosophy" as a discipline (ignoring its specific content in any book, or college department, or general fashionable tendency) has an early and an intimate role: i think two-fold, one being the militant mind-army of scepticism against the hegemony of the church in matterws academics; two being a kind of handily pre-generalised organisational principle when it came to deciding what counts as an acceptable dicipline (yes to maths and greek and history, no to chemistry, until the late 19th century); how the departments are structured (no accident btw that DEWEY is famous for pragmatism AND the decimal library system)

given the pragmatics of departmental structure, any attempt to banish philosophy from its upper level role is going to seem to like the introduction of a revolutionary barabarian chaos -- it wouldn't BE this in my opinion, but to many embattled defenders of the state-funded liberal-arts college system we have, it would be opening the gates to catastrophe

so i think ceding big-deal-dom to the esoteric philosophical point is -- largely speaking -- an acknowledgement who the prevailing big daddy is of safe civil academic discussion: it's a kind of mental protection money