BALTIMORE NATIVE SON John Rawls died last week. His obituary writers included encomia like "most important political thinker of the 20th century," "best theorist of his generation," "America's leading political philosopher."

But the average American probably has never heard of the James Bryant Conant university professor emeritus at Harvard, much less cracked the cover of his 1971 magnum opus and now classic, A Theory of Justice.

Americans don't put much faith in philosophers and have never had much use for tweedy professors when it comes to the rough and tumble of politics. Indeed, it has become a rhetorical staple for those seeking elective office to vigorously distance themselves from ivory towers and their inhabitants.

Real Americans, so the talking point for the stump speech goes, don't need the professor telling us how to get things done. We don't have theorists help us untangle the nuances of our political process; we have pundits and pollsters.

Yet as we recover from another campaign season in which candidates regularly obfuscate both the means and ends of governing and play upon the fears and anxieties of the governed to get elected, we would do worse perhaps than philosophize.

And indeed, Mr. Rawls' genius was to do for thinking about politics what many Americans say they want politicians to do. Namely, to bring moral and ethical concern to the power plays and Machiavellian gamesmanship of special interests that seem to define what government has become.

For Mr. Rawls, how you bring that ethical concern to politics is the tradition of liberalism: Not "liberal" and "liberalism" in their current usage as partisan malediction, but rather the political tradition that includes Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and Kant.

In the Rawlsian liberal tradition, we enter into a social contract as citizens. And for Mr. Rawls, the contract needs to have certain requirements if it is to be just. The contract has to say that each person has the right to the most extensive liberty compatible with that same liberty for everyone else. And that social inequalities are just only if those inequalities do not harm those socially least advantaged. Mr. Rawls called this justice fairness, one of those strange ideas that emanates from philosophers.

Importantly, Mr. Rawls proposed a little thinking exercise to determine whether a social contract, a party platform or a policy prescription meets the requirement of justice as fairness. He asked that as we select the rules and rulers we live by, we take a moment to step behind a "veil of ignorance." Behind this veil we don't know where in the social hierarchy we are. We may be wealthy, or we may be impoverished. We may be healthy and able, or sick and disabled.

Thinking this way, Mr. Rawls believed, we would only then enter into a social contract in which the least fortunate among us are the least disadvantaged. For behind Mr. Rawls' veil, but for the grace of God go I.

Now, of course, this oversimplifies more than a bit. And, of course, self-interest and partisan sensibility are not so easy to get rid of in our thinking, metaphoric veils notwithstanding. Yet as citizens we have a duty to think about the kind of society in which we want to live. As Americans, we tolerate the inequality of outcomes of life's work, but we forcefully demand that the rules be set up so that everyone has a chance. We want a fair shot.

Maryland, like most states, is facing a huge budget shortfall. Nationally, unprecedented challenges face our federal government. Hard choices will have to be made about the distribution of scarce but necessary resources.

So at the next candidate debate, during the next election cycle, as we give our consent to those governing us, let's ask the politicians to step behind the veil of ignorance and articulate clearly who is given an advantage, who is disadvantaged, and is that fair, is that just. Let us philosophize a bit as we try to create a better America.

Michael Corbin is a free-lance writer who lives in Baltimore.