 In the end the issue concerns the value and depth of a tradition of philosophical inquiry and apprenticeship, weighed against the opportunity costs of pursuing such a tradition to the exclusion of all others. This question was posed rather urgently a decade after Anderson’s death when the department of philosophy at Sydney split into two distinct units, immediately on political grounds, but inevitably also over the nature of philosophical inquiry and study itself. Although the department was eventually re-united as a single professional and productive unit, its members have very little interest in revisiting a troubled history. And this applies most particularly to the highly distinctive work and legacy of Professor John Anderson, the dominant force in philosophy at Sydney for much of the twentieth century.