Reasoning and Insularity

Perhaps the most influential moment in the trial of Socrates is one to which Plato can only allude--the failure of Socrates to influence the jury.  For, constituting that failure is the discrepancy between the Ideal and the Real, i. e. between the validity of an argument, and its efficacy, or lack thereof.  It is also the origin of the insularity of much of the subsequent tradition, including, for example, the extraction of 'Language' from actual communication, and the Proposition from 'propositional attitudes'.  While some advocates of that insularity go so far as to insist that the aforementioned discrepancy is outside the purview of what they call 'Philosophy', critics of the withdrawal regard it as un-Socratic tacit complicity with the status quo that has trivialized the social function of Reasoning.  Similarly trivialized is Tenure, which has degenerated from the protection of innovation from ideological repression, to a career milestone tantamount to guaranteed retirement from productivity.