The discussion on the possible gap between skeptical philosophy and moral imperatives has taken an exciting new turn, with new comments by The Happy Tutor, AKMA, and others. What a thrill it is to be in contact with such rich minds as these.

AKMA, in relating Derrida with justice, writes: "Our knowledge falls short of the certainty that justice would require." In the ensuing remarks, AKMA characterizes this lack of knowledge as a lack of knowledge of the facts of the case, which would allow the public to "ascertain guilt or innocence."

But I worry that something far more disturbing is at stake. The knowledge we lack is not simply that of the events leading up to a murder, say. No, to seriously deconstruct justice (and I will take pains to point out here that I have not yet read the writings that AKMA cites) it would be the concept of justice and not the guilt of a suspect that we'd need to cross-examine, doubting its authenticity.

We'd need to ask: what discourses, academic and popular, does justice move in? What external needs—political, cultural, neurological—shape it? What historical accidents trip it up and misguide it? How often is the exhausting labor of public debate consumed by the charisma of a demagogue? And so how do these ancillary factors determine the set of situations which get nominated as "just"?

Since I know that the "truth" of the questions will not be easy to extract from the historical variation in the answers, I realize that the only lesson I can draw from asking these questions is a very disturbing one. Unless a very rigorous analysis (scientific?) someday produces some surprising results, the answers to the questions are: everything, everything, everything misguides the notion of "justice"; and the asking of these questions, like the boy in the story, uncovers the foundations of justice: nothing, nothing, nothing. It is a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing. "Justice," once deconstructed, evaporates like a TV image into snow, electromagnetic noise of the big bang.

So perhaps Derrida has, as AKMA claims, a "strong commitment to justice," but if so, I warrant he betrays the deconstructive project. To say that "justice is always greater than our instantiations of it" (AKMA's words) is the kind of inflated philosophical claim that this project would deflate, is it not?

Once that image, of justice, or any other "naive" human value, does so evaporate, some of us begin asking ourselves, "What shall we do now?" Having deconstructed, we want to reconstruct, this time acknowledging the contingency of our decisions (not claims, this time round, but decisions). For my own part, the reconstructive project begins by founding notions of, e.g., "justice" in the naive sense of it, the sense that falls out of cultural history, out of individual (?) biochemical needs and out of whatever thing like a soul there be. Beginning from the intuitive sense of justice, we might try to bring precision and resolution into the concept, to make distinctions where they are needed, and to pull together unneeded distinctions—but always with a sense that this discourse is nothing more than action (not statements! not claims!): an entreaty upon your fellow human, asking h/er/im for something which, you have decided, you honestly need.

(entry title taken from Tutor's phrase in comment at AKMA)