 In 1972 members of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Sydney were caught in a bitter dispute concerning subject matter, educational practices and the nature of philosophical study itself, and by the start of 1974 the department had split into two separate units. D. M. Armstrong led the minority Department of Traditional and Modern Philosophy away from what he perceived to be the politically radical but philosophically barren Department of General Philosophy. Political disruptions throughout the academic world in the early 1970s were not uncommon, but the particular intransigence and secessionist tendencies which characterised both sides of the conflict at Sydney may well have been at least in part a legacy of Anderson’s teaching and practice. The department eventually reunited some thirty years later.