SAINT JOHNuniversal form, as to the desired qualities of the exemplary Christian Life.’’^50 Hagiography
functions to preserve the saint’s example, which is seen as worthy of preservation because
his or her life will haveinstantiatedvalues whose viability and desirability cannot be
suggested by reason or historical precedent alone. Saints, then, serve as sources of inspira-
tion: they are exemplary figures who make possible what, but for their example, would be
inconceivable. They embody human possibilities that call for identification and imitation.
And, as is suggested by the shifts in character from the saints who attended the church’s
origins in a marginal community to those chosen after its ascent to an institutionalized
state religion, the shifting values and political circumstances of a community are reflected
in the lives of those it chooses to designate as saints.^51 While I have sought to trace the
significance of liberalism’s having a saint, I will here identify why it might have this saint
in particular. Having argued that much of Rawls’s appeal lies in the authoritative style of
his personal voice and its capacity to imbue discussion of political arrangements with the
qualities of judiciousness, good will, and common sense, I will claim that the example of
Rawls’s life makes clear a source of the impulse to moral philosophy, philosophical justi-
fication in general, and the current imagination of what liberal political life entails, em-
bodied in hisTheory of JusticeandPolitical Liberalism. To what needs might these qualities
appeal? In what might the appeal of Rawlsian reasonableness, and the practices of liberal
politics its spirit is intended to govern, consist?
Following James’s contention that a philosopher’s ‘‘temperament’’ or ‘‘essential per-
sonal flavor’’ determines the course and outcome of his or her work as well as the extent
of its effect upon its audience allows us to see, in another way, the pertinence of biogra-
phy, or hagiography, to political thought. On this point, James writes: ‘‘The books of all
the great philosophers are like so many men. Our sense of an essential personal flavor in
each one of them, typical but indescribable, is the finest fruit of our own accomplished
philosophic education. What the system pretends to be is a picture of the great universe
of God. What it is,—and oh so flagrantly!—is the revelation of how intensely odd the
personal flavor of some fellow creature is.’’^52 James is far from lamenting this personaliza-
tion of philosophical argument; he maintains, on the contrary, that ‘‘the one thing that
hascountedso far in philosophy is that a man shouldseethings, see them straight in his
own peculiar way, and be dissatisfied with any opposite way of seeing them.’’^53 Philosoph-
ical voices worth listening to, James tells us, will be distinctly inflected, and grasping the
nature of these inflections is the highest measure of philosophical education. Rawls’s rhet-
oric is not just a collection of various devices but a collection of devices used to present
his own distinctive character and to inspire the reader to adopt that character by partici-
pating in conversation with it. What is the nature of this inflection of character and, thus,
of its appeal?
Insofar as Rawls was famous, personally famous, it was for his intensely private life
and for his largely successful attempt to avoid celebrity.^54 Throughout his career, he gave
very few interviews, and these never on personal topics. Toward the end of his life, how-
PAGE 359359.................16224$ CH18 10-13-06 12:35:52 PS