During the 1960s, several academics from the Department of Philosophy at the University of Chile became involved in a dispute concerning the aims of both the philosophical discipline and the university as a whole. Because this dispute turned into a conflict of national proportions and brought about the collapse of the administrative structure of the university in May of 1968, it raises a number of questions abut the motivations of these academics and the extent to which the philosophical discipline, as cultivated in Chile, inspired their words and deeds in relation to university affairs.