By "art" some readers think "not methodical" or esoteric/unsharable because the language is denormalized. I think what's meant is closer to Nietzsche saying (p

By "art" some readers think "not methodical" or esoteric/unsharable because the language is denormalized. I think what's meant is closer to Nietzsche saying (post-Kant) that philosophy is justified aesthetically, i.e., by its ability to actually change minds. A mathematician or logician wants to establish, hold, and apply principles -- no surprise that it's engendered by conservative wealthy people. MacDonald listening to Wittgenstein and pulling herself out of sickness and poverty was more interested in the transformation possible - the aesthetic effect - and its impact on what might be called one's moral sense. Plato never severed the social context or personal agency from the discourse. Readers (gleaners?) who pluck words from his dialogs as "ideas" without appreciating the dramatic moment generate all sorts of straw-man misconceptions. Plato presented a host of ways people failed to change their minds, through learning or critique (elenchus), giving us (at least) a catalog of fault models that still apply, and which the reader is supposed to learn and avoid. Math and CS today change minds in a sense (mostly because that's where the money is), but nothing actually or historically prevents those people from building bombs, surveilling populations, manipulating markets intended to discipline power, and generally disclaiming responsibility for their work product. It's similar to the opportunism driving social justice warriors to have anti-social effects. Structuralism provided methods for disclosing cultural systems, post-structuralism reduced that to critique undercutting the systems (of oppression). Impact is its own justification. In MacDonald's terms, math and critical theory enlarge certain aspects of existence (and diminish others). Nietzsche and Plato pose the question of responsibility for that effect: what happens after (the man-made illusion of) God is killed? Was Socrates as teacher responsible for his students becoming democratic tyrants? (If you could influence the thinking of generations, wouldn't that be even better than the immortality of fame? But how can you avoid unleashing generations of sophistry?) I think it minimizes MacDonald to say she was only concerned with acknowledging the value of artistic appreciation, as if philosophy were arm-candy for the real men of science. At that moment, nothing bothered scientists and logicians more than knowing their domain is incomplete, so that's the main thing she established. But the real question that posed is what's considered moral philosophy: what thinking leads to good people?