ABSTRACT
It’s wonderful to be here today to talk to you about theory and justice. Because your conversations about theory take place under the rubric of Justice Studies, you have already placed the theoretical enterprise in relation to a demand, justice, that it must meet at least halfway, and which I am taking for granted here with you. Recently, I have been talking and teaching social theory in relation to sociology which involves, by contrast, spending an enormous amount of time simply establishing the relevance of justice. To be in Justice Studies, then, is to already know a lot about what knowledge and theory is for. Whereas in sociology, they are always repeating the famous question Robert Lynd demanded of his professional colleagues in 1938, when fascism in Europe had created what he felt was a “critical time for social science”: knowledge for what?
