Word: putnam
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...professors. There were respectable moral convictions on all sides, and even among those who, like myself, feel that a University is not the proper place for military preparation there were divergences over the answer to the problem. One does not have to be a moral relativist, pace Professor Putnam, in order to want to weigh arguments and take note of the legitimate concerns even of those whose point of view one rejects. For instance, while I find little justification for the present ROTC program, I recognize the right of students to pursue military preparation as one extra-curricular activity among...
Hoffmann vs. Putnam...
Liberal and radical spokesmen for the Faculty were, respectively, Stanley H. Hoffmann, professor of Government, and Hilary W. Putnam, professor of Philosophy...
...Putnam defended the use of militant tactics on behalf of moral causes. "As a philosopher, I do get depressed about the moral relativism that our colleagues in Social Sciences see fit to embrace," he said. "The idea that on a serious moral issue on which people disagree, neither side can claim the truth seems to me an intolerable position," Putnam added. "What people have, they have because they fought," he said...
...opposing this, I do not wish for a moment to suggest limiting the rights of individual Faculty members to share the Putnam position. This, however, is very different from committing the Faculty as a whole to it, with the implication that the members who dissented were not cognizant of the moral obligations of a University Faculty. Talcott Parsons Professor of Sociology