I agree. I've done the same thing in works of art - used art as a vehicle for communicating philosophical concepts. Which is fine, but there's no rigor there, no defense of the concept, no detailing the implications. There's no need, because I'm not creating or defending philosophical concepts, only sharing them.
I recently wrote a song called "Everything Is Made of Love", which lifted pretty heavily from Spinoza. The song works well, but it no way makes me Spinoza's peer. More recently, I've been reading some of the Frankfurt School thinkers, and their idea of art as a means of expressing revolutionary (in a political sense) ideas. I looked back on a play I wrote/produced last year in that context, and was very pleased to see how well I expressed the ideas of Marcuse et al, manipulating pop culture in order to criticize society on other levels, even though I wasn't really cognizant of the Frankfurt School at the time.
I recently wrote a song called "Everything Is Made of Love", which lifted pretty heavily from Spinoza. The song works well, but it no way makes me Spinoza's peer. More recently, I've been reading some of the Frankfurt School thinkers, and their idea of art as a means of expressing revolutionary (in a political sense) ideas. I looked back on a play I wrote/produced last year in that context, and was very pleased to see how well I expressed the ideas of Marcuse et al, manipulating pop culture in order to criticize society on other levels, even though I wasn't really cognizant of the Frankfurt School at the time.