“The Death of Socrates by Means of the APA,” by Q, after “The Death of Socrates,” by Jacques-Louis David, 1787 (APP, 2013)
By a brilliant philosophical idea, Robert Hanna means a philosophical idea that manifests great intellectual creativity, insight, and originality, opens up a new way of looking at a large domain of concepts, facts, phenomena, theories, and/or other information, and that would have significant sociocultural and social-institutional impact and influence if it were widely adopted and disseminated. By an important philosophical idea, he means a brilliant philosophical idea that is indeed widely adopted and disseminated, a brilliant philosophical idea with legs, that is, with actual significant impact and influence. And by a revolutionary philosophical idea, he means an important philosophical idea that brings about a shift in philosophical paradigm by inducing the adoption and dissemination of radically new thought-shapers by philosophers and non-philosophers alike, thereby permanently changing the course of philosophical, intellectual, sociocultural, and social-institutional history. In “Running On Empty: Why Hasn’t Professional Academic Philosophy Produced Any Important Ideas in the Last 50 Years?,” Hanna leaves aside revolutionary philosophical ideas and focuses on merely important philosophical ideas. Correspondingly, he argues for two basic theses: (i) first, professional academic philosophy has produced no important philosophical ideas produced in the last 50 years, and (ii) second, the most obvious and plausible explanation for this disturbing fact is that (iia) the hegemony of leading trends in recent and contemporary professional academic philosophy, (iib) the hyper-disciplined, rigidified social-institutional structures of philosophical education, and (iic) the entrenched practices of professional philosophical research-and-publishing over the last 50 years, have collectively systematically discouraged, ignored, and suppressed new brilliant philosophical ideas.
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