What's interesting about FLT is that in the sense of proving a hypothesis, although the attempts themselves have lead to failures in their objective, they often illuminated whole new areas of mathematics, but this realization only comes somewhat later than when the proof is realized. It was obvious that a particular attempt had failed relatively quickly, but the lessons learned and their applications required a keen (creative mathematical) eye to spot.

Badiou (a continental political philosopher interested in the philosophy of mathematics) uses FLT as an example in political contexts, to what extent we can say that a utopian vision has failed even if it results in disaster, we should be (and some have been) looking out for the lessons which are learned after failure.