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Veils: The Poetics of John Rawls

tGeorgeArmstrongKelly

Plutarch recounts in Sais, a holy place of Egypt, the image of Isis,

understood by the Greeks to be a version of Pallas Athena, bore the inscrip-

tion: "I am everything that has been, that is, and that shall ever be: no human

mortal has discovered me behind my veil."' This recalls a very different god,

Yahweh, whose claim is also to compress all knowledge into an eternal

present and whose dwelling, in Solomon's temple, is in a special sanctuary,

the Holy of Holies, also guarded by a veil.

There, one might say, the similarity ends. Yahweh is a masculine diety

("the father of his people"), though imagistically he remains a space or an

absence filled by a name ("I Am That I Am") indicative of the transcendent

distance of the eternal. Isis is a female shape imaging carnal knowledge

behind her veil (with its Machiavellian, Baconian temptations). Her truth, as

Plutarch makes clear, is driven by desire, truth being a "desire for divinity,""a study ... and work more holy than the vow and obligation of chastity or the

guarding and sealing of any...."2 The almost certain wages, however, for the

would-be ravisher is unfulfillment and death, whereas Yahweh, having be-

come the God of the Christians, promises eternal life through the sacrifice of

his only-begotten son and a truth above knowledge "that shall make you

free" (John 8:32).

Editor'snote: George Kelly sent in this essay just a few weeks beforehis death

(December1987),andindeedbeforereceivingmy response.The firstreaders hought t

unwise to publish it on several grounds: t was cryptic, oracular,ornatelyallusive,intricately nd ronicallynvolvedwith its owntarget,"veils,"andotherwiseuncharacter-

istic of Kelly's style; its argumentwas hardto penetrate or historiansand politicaltheoristsalike. Worstof all, theauthor ould not be asked orclarificationsr for the sort

of changeswhicheditorsand criticsoftensuggest;andso, as an interested arty Georgewas a goodfriendandclassmate s well ascolleagueandvaluedsupporterf thisJournal)I wasinitiallyreluctanto overturnuchexpert udgments.n themeantime, owever,more

positive udgmentshave accumulated,ndI havedecided t wouldbe a great oss not to

publish his last,obviouslydeeplyfelt effortof one of the mostdistinguishedcholarsof

our time.Therefore, ftertoo long a delay,we present his essay with minimaleditorial

changes.D.R.K.

Plutarch,Moralia,354c.

2 Ibid., 351e.

343

Copyright996byJournalf theHistoryf Ideas,nc.



GeorgeArmstrongKelly

To the Semiticmindthe nameexpressedandrepresentedhepowerof the

person:God was presentin a special way wherever the "Name of Yahweh"

was.3 Thecontentof the Holy of Holies, originally portable n the ancientArk

of the Covenant,was the two stone tablets of the Law received by Moses at

Horeb (1 Kings 8:9). God's presence, once installed in the Templeof

Jerusalem,was representedas "a cloud [that] filled the house of the Lord"

(ibid, 8:10; cf. 2 Chronicles5:10, 13). God was cloud; knowledgewas duty.Of the physical place of this indwelling principleof knowledge, Jesus said

(John 2:19): "Destroy this sanctuary:within three days I shall raise it up

again."The evangelist explains that his metaphor s transferred o the new

Christian idea of the word made flesh.4 John's gospel does not cite the

renderingof the veil of the temple,butthe synopticgospels all recountthat it

was "rent n twain from top to bottom"(Matthew27:51, Mark 16:38, Luke

23:45) at Christ's Crucifixion. The idea is essentially that knowledge as

commandand duty has been surpassedby a knowledge that is love in thecrucifiedrevelationof the Son of God. This returnsus, ambiguously,to the

image of the goddess Isis; for even in Hebrew scripture t is foretold:"The

watchmenthat went about the city found me, they smote me, they wounded

me; the keepersof the walls took away my veil fromme" (Song of Solomon

5:7). If there is here a clear prefigurationof the fate of both Christand the

temple, there is also an echo of the likely fate of the harlotRahab,who let

Joshua'sspies into Jericho,had God not saved her from the ruinof thatcity

(Joshua6:17).

The purpose of this essay is not to dwell on obvious imagistic andpsychological attachmentsbetween wisdom andsexual knowledge, but earlynotice of this liaison is needed to connectthe philosophicaldiscourseon veils

with motifs disclosed in figurative iterature.For the veil thathides the objectof desire may also hide the realityof the name or of naming;preservingthe

veil may be a mode of love, just as challengingit is also. Forexample,when

John Rawls writes: "The principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of

ignorance. This ensures that no one is advantagedor disadvantaged n the

choice of principles by the outcome of naturalchance or the contingencyof

social circumstances,"5what does his image of the veil intend to convey?What exactly is on each side of this veil? Fromwhat knowledge protectingthe ignorant?Is it a kind of knowledge regardingwhich T. S. Eliot could

write: "After such knowledge, what forgiveness?"6Can the veils of Isis and

of the Holy of Holies help us to understandRawls's veil?

3 Rolandde Vaux,Ancient Israel (2 vols.;NewYork,1965), II:Religious Institutions,

327.4 Cf. Hebrews10:20:"Bya new andliving way, which he hathconsecratedor us,

through he veil, that is to say, his flesh ...." Also, 1 Corinthians: 16-17:"If anyone

destroysGod'stemple,God will destroyhim. For God's temple s holy, and thattemple

you are."5JohnRawls,A Theory f Justice(Cambridge,Mass.,1971), 13. HereafterTJ.6 In "Gerontion."

344



We have, it is said, outlived an era of knowledge or seeing whose major

vehicle, cast in a number of discourses, has been "representation" r "the

mirrorof nature."7That is perhaps rue,in the large, if one takes as irrelevant

or as the production of "traditional intellectuals" (Gramsci) a contrary

strategy of knowledge by "veiling"or accepting theveil as a condition of

highest reality(formsof the idealistand the religious traditions).The point is

not scandalous, for many of the supreme achievements of post-Cartesiancultureare inexplicableor (as Bacon would say) "feigned"without it. I shall

not, in what follows, indulge in what seems an increasinglypointless argu-ment about"scientific"and "poetic"ways of seeing but shall be selectively

exposing the history of an artifact-imageof our culture.

Veiling is an essentially religious gesture in the seventeenthand eigh-teenth centuries while unveiling suggests science and enlightenment.The

association of veils with religieuses tells us much. In this regard the di-

chotomy of the veil of Isis andthe veil of the Templeholds relatively stable

(with the major proviso that much religious thought-stressing "reason-

ableness"-partakes of enlightenment and unveiling). Some simple ex-

ampleswill illustrate he point. When Pascalwrites of God, he describeshim

as "hiddenbehind the veil of nature that conceals him from us until the

Incarnation,hen,when it was necessaryforhim to appear,he continued o be

hidden by covering himself with humanity."8Montesquieu, on the other

hand,makes the characteristicpoint aboutunveiling in his essay "Du gout":

"Art comes to our rescue and lifts the veil behind which natureconcealsherself."9It is the human lifting of the veil that discloses la belle nature,

which, in the place of Pascal's God,has been dwelling behindit. Veiling, for

Montesquieu, suggests a kind of decorous suspensionof clarity:"Thereare

cases where one must for a moment place a veil on liberty, just as [the

Romans] hid the statues of the gods" (De l'esprit des lois, XII, 19). The

referencehere is to an extremecase, bills of attaindern England: he veil, an

appropriate ymbol for a "law of necessity," is but "for a moment."More

normal in an age of enlightenmentat grips with "superstition"and "Gothi-

cism" is the incessantunveiling (X, Y, or Z "devoile")thatone finds in the

pamphletsof the Revolution. The cognate term"unmasking"will no longermean the divesture of the nun's veil (a standardjoke of Revolutionary

comedy), but in Marxismit will make double referenceto the unmaskingof

the tragic actor in Attic comedy (Hegel's "happyconsciousness"),whereby

7 RichardRorty,Philosophyandthe Mirrorof Nature Princeton,1979).8 Blaise Pascal,"FourthLetter o Mile. de Roannez,"n Oeuvrescompletes Paris,

1923-31),III,449.9Article"Taste,"n Diderot,d'Alembert,t al.,Encyclopedia ections, r.N. S. Hoyt

and T. Cassirer Indianapolis,1965), 345. Cf. Jean-JacquesRousseau,Reveriesd'unpromeneurolitaire,in Oeuvres ompletes 4 vols.; Paris,1959-), I, 1011-12:"Latristeveriteque le tempset la raisonm'ont devoileeen me faisantsentirmon malheur."

John Rawls 345



George Armstrong Kelly

ordinary persons are brought into the play, and the "depersonification"

(persona = mask) of the legal subject of Roman (viz., "bourgeois") property

law.

Marxism runs well ahead of our story, but it calls to mind German

intellectualdevelopments critical

to the matter of veils.Here,

as is so

frequently the case, Immanuel Kant is a watershed figure between Enlighten-

ment and Romanticism. In a note to the "Analytic of the Sublime" in his

Critique of Aesthetic Judgement, Kant writes: "Perhaps there has never been

a more sublime utterance, or a thought more sublimely expressed, than the

well-known inscription upon the Temple of Isis (Mother Nature)...."' He

then goes on to cite the divine claim with which this essay began. A

following comment is even more interesting: "Segnerl made use of this idea

in a suggestive vignette on the frontispiece of his Natural Philosophy, in

order to inspire his pupil at the threshold of that temple into which he was

about to lead him, with such a holy awe as would dispose his mind to serious

attention."

Several important and mildly puzzling things are going on here. First of

all we clearly recognize the enlightenment motif, the sacred duty of the

pursuit of knowledge, for which, although Kant does not say so, a prerequi-

site is to enter the temple of nature with the final goal of lifting the veil of the

goddess. Kant does not allude to lifting the veil because his critical philoso-

phy has already shown that this is not only a rash but an impossible,

undertaking. The essential reality of nature (the Ding-an-sich) must remain

ever veiled to the discursive intellect (Verstand). It is only the law of duty,freely hearkened to, that permits us access to the ineffable and the

eternal-and this reminds us somewhat of the "cloud" and the Mosaic

decalogue contained in the Holy of Holies. Still, the investigation of nature

within the proper limits of reason is a praiseworthy and sanctified task. Both

its rich promises and ever-receding, ever-veiled ends inspire awe.'2 Is there

danger contained in this awe? The use of the category of the sublime obliges

us to think so. Segner's pupil is instructed by the oracle to fix his mind loftily

on the business at hand.

But there is something here about Kant's language recalling Dr.

Johnson's boutade that one's impending execution focuses the mind wonder-

fully. Indeed, in his earlier account of the sublime, Edmund Burke uses the

10ImmanuelKant, Critique of Judgement, tr. J. C. Meredith(Oxford, 1978), 179n.I Johann Andreas Segner (1704-77), a professor at Gottingen, was well-known in his

time for his writings on medicine and on mathematicsand the physical sciences.12The account developed in this paragraphof Kant's use of the Isis image and of the

connections he makes between the "terrible" ublime, the law of duty, and Schwarmerei is

confirmed by Kant himself in two little-known passages: "Der einzig mogliche Beweis-

grund der gottlichen Allgenugsamkeit," in Werke in sechs Bdnden, ed. Wilhelm

Weischedel (Darmstadt, 1956-64), II, 723-25; and "Vor einem vornehmen Ton in derPhilosophie," ibid., VI, 395-96. I am grateful to Peter Fenves for helping me to grasp the

entire significance of the veil image for Kantby calling my attentionto these texts.

346



spectacle of the execution of Damiens as an illustrationof the sublime's

connection with terror.'3Kant had of course carefully studied Burke and

made notes on him. It is doubtfulhere,however, thatKanthad the image of a

criminal execution in mind when he wrote these words: a just or unjust

punishmentof a particularis not what is at issue. The danger-thereal

sublime-would seem to point to a more generalextinctionof two sorts: (1)the physical end of the world in a final conflagration;and (2) the madnessor

extinction of the mind in Schwdrmerei, n its unbridledimpulse to plunge

headlong into imperial nonsense. It is not the sensuous quality of Isis to

which Kant makes reference here; it is to a more Mosaic, if secularized,version of the transgressionof the law. As Kant well knew, Yahweh had

made a covenantwith Noah andhis sons after the GreatDeluge thathe would

never again bring destructionupon the world. But could man freely do this

for himself? What if justice requiredit (fiat justitia, ruat coelum), or fate

simply ordained t? Find me ten good men in Sodom andGomorrah,Yahwehhadsaid;perhaps,echoes Kant,therehas never been such a thingin the world

as a "goodwill." And, as Kantwell knew also, as a philosophyof nature,the

possibilities for the destructionof the planet were inscribedin time. What,thendid lie behindthe veil? Was it the objectivecorrelativeof thatterrifyingsublime?Segner's pupil had every reason to takehis work seriously.

As a whole the Critiqueof AestheticJudgementmoves in a somewhat

differenttrajectory rom this hint of doom. It raises hope that the "disinter-

ested" faculty of taste and the common approvalof beauty could furnisha

sort of bridge across the abyss that yawned between phenomena andnoumena,between scientific andpracticalreason.Kantsuggestedthis move,

although his philosophical scruples prevented him from making it. It re-

mained for Schiller to develop fully a theory of aesthetic mediation and

aesthetic celebrationboth on behalfof the artist'sclaims as a legislatorandas

a salvationarymode of social therapeutics or the divided self in a pluralizedcivilization. Schiller's purpose was to advance the "spirit"of Kantianism,

while softening the harshnessof the "letter."No more needs to be said on

this particularssue here, except to note that an illustriousfriendandkindred

spirit Wilhelm von Humboldt, impelled by similar motives of aesthetic

redemptionandBildung,reintroducedhe artisticuse of the veil image in his

essay On the Limits of State Action, parts of which were published in the

Berliner Monatsschrift n 1792, two years after the Critiqueof Judgement

appeared.Humboldtdoes not see fine art as a vehicle for lifting the veil of nature,a

la Montesquieu. To the contrary,"whateverman beholds ... through the

medium of the senses ... is nowhere immediately revealed to him [in its

essence]; even what inspires him with the most ardentlove, and takes the

13EdmundBurke,A Philosophical Inquiryinto the Origin of OurIdeas of the Sublime

and the Beautiful (New York, 1844), partI, section 7, 51.

John Rawls 347




strongesthold on his whole nature, s shroudedby the thickestveil."'4 Strive

as he may, man is doomed to failure if he seeks to know purebeing behind

this veil. A more modest way (the Kantian) is the more certain;and this

involves the "simple idea of moral perfection,"which requires "no other

veil orform."15

But in order for that idea to be "not a merecold

abstractionof the reason, but a warm impulse of the heart,"it is necessary to cultivate

"aesthetic feeling, in virtue of which the sensuous is to us a veil of the

spiritual, and the spiritual the living principle of the world of sense...."16

Poetry, for example, "clothes not only thought,but sensation,with the most

delicate veil.""7The artof veiling is the pathof cultivationand the measure

of individuality,of the truly human:the "sensuous" s that veil, not one of

sense impressionsbut of feeling (a la Rousseau),not the imprintof naturebut

the warmthof the spiritwithin it. Clarity s not what is requiredhere:light is

made twilight, a diffused light whose veiled rays are impregnatedby "the

idea of moral perfection." The goddess is appeased by this harmonioushuman appreciation.

What s the fate of the adeptwho would challengethe goddessof Sais and

lift her veil-not only the fate of a naturalphilosopherbut of a poet as well?

Schiller's answer is resoundinglyclear in his "The Veiled Image of Sais"

("Die Verschleierte Bild zu Sais").'8The youth who approaches he templeof Isis is warnedby the inscription.He reacts:"Was has ich/Wennich nicht

Alles habe?... Die Wahrheit st die Antwort."His thirst for final truthis so

overpowering that, tormented in his sleep, he resolves to return to the

sanctuaryanddo the deed.Althoughno mortalever lifts theveil, he who doesso will gaze on truth:

Sey hinterihm, was will: Ich heb ihn auf.

(Er rufts mit lauterStimm.)Ich will sie schauen.

Schauen:

Gellt ihm ein langes Echo spottendnach.

14 Wilhelm von Humboldt, The Limits of State Action, ed. J. W. Burrow (Cambridge,

1969), 61. H. G. Gadamereffectively summarizes the difference between the theories of

Montesquieu and Humboldt in Truthand Method (New York, 1975), 74: "And 'les beaux

arts,' as long as they are seen in this [earlier] framework,are a perfecting of reality and not

an externalmasking, veiling, or transformationof it. But if the contrastbetween reality and

appearances determines the concept of art, this breaks up the inclusive framework of

nature.Art becomes a standpointof its own and establishes its own autonomous claim to

supremacy."15

Humboldt,State Action, 59.16

Ibid., 75.

'7Ibid., 74.18FriedrichSchiller, Gedichte, in Schillers Werke 21 vols; Weimar, 1943-82), I, 254-

56.

348



The youth is struck "besinnungslosund bleich" at the foot of the statue.

However, he is not struck dead. Instead, he is condemned (much like the

AncientMariner,butwithouthope of contrition)to a living death,leadingto

a cheerless early grave, incapableof saying what he has seen but obliged to

warn others:

Weh dem, der zu derWahrheitgeht durchSchuld,Sie wird ihm nimmermahr rfreulichseyn.

Truthcannot be had throughguilt, the guilt of presumptionand, beyond it,the guilt of lust: it cannot be named. This is the only truth hathe so painfully

discovers, leaving still highly problematic he highertruthof Isis-a truthof

immortality hatnaturedenies.

Can such a truth-akin to the Christianredemptive ruth-be obtained at

Sais? Novalis leaves us the interestingnote, dated May 1798, to his prose-

poem Die Lehrlinge zu Sais: "He succeeded-he lifted the veil of the

goddess of Sais-But what did he see?-Wonder of wonders-he saw

himself."19Novalis perhaps uses the word "wonder"(Wunder) self-con-

sciously anddeliberately: t translates he Greekthaumazein,a term used byHomer to convey the amazementof recognizinga god in his or her disguise,later domesticated by Aristotle to signify the amazement out of which

philosophy arose. Clearly Novalis is not suggesting a formal return to the

"mirrorof nature" interpretationof truth. He is suggesting "self-aware-

ness" (Selbstbewusstsein)and a furtherdevelopmentof idealism that Hegelwill carryout.

From his earliest writings Hegel is preoccupiedwith the arcanumor

veiled sanctuary.He contrasts cheerful Eleusis with the Hebrew Holy of

Holies; their significance is opposed, for the sanctuaryof the temple is

somethinginto which no ordinaryman can be initiated,but only a space on

which he is made to depend.20The Eleusinian god could be picturedand

worshipped gregariously,but not defiled by words; whereas the Israelites

chatteredabout their laws, but were alienated from sacred community. As

regardsChristianity,the corporealessentiality of the second person of the

TrinitybothersHegel, a concern that will help him to shape his completed

system. Hegel can countenance the divine's veiling of its nature in the

humiliating form of a suffering servant, but he complains that "the veil

strippedoff in the grave,thereal humanform,has risenagainout of the graveandattached tself to the one who is risenas God."21Herethe Hegelianveil is

the body (the "flesh"of the Letter to the Hebrews);in the sense that it must

19Novalis, Schriften (4 vols.; Stuttgart,1960-75), I, 110.

20 G. W. F. Hegel, "The Spirit of Christianity and its Fate," in T. M. Knox (ed.),Friedrich Hegel: Early Theological Writings(New York, 1961), 193.

21Ibid., 293.

John Rawls 349




be stripped form the spirit, Hegel suggests the audacity of the Sais

episode-but in reverse, in the sense of a revised Christology.In Glauben und Wissen,where the Good Fridayimage occurs, thereis a

particularly avage attackon Schleiermacher,with whom Hegel would, years

later,have cold but correctcollegial relationsat the University of Berlin.It

can scarcely escape the eye that Schleiermachermeans "veil-maker,"and it

is tempting to imagine that Hegel, who valued word-play, appreciated his

etymology. He writes, "The virtuosity of the religious artist [i.e., Schleier-

macher]has to be allowed to mingle its subjectivityinto the tragic earnest-

ness of religion. His individualitymust not be veiled and embodied in an

objective representation f great figuresandtheirmutualmotionwhich is, in

turn,a veil for the motion of the Universe in them-as it was in [the] epicsand tragedies which artistic genius built for the church triumphantof Na-

ture."22

Hegel's point is that Schleiermacher, he religious virtuoso,belittles theconcreteness and power of Christiandramaand treatshis congregationlike

children,privatizingthem from a commonfaithwith his burstsof subjectiveinwardness. The two instances of "veil" that the English translation

records-in a very murkypassage of the originalGerman-are not rendered

by "Schleier" or "verschleiern" but by the very close synonym "ver-

hiillen." Neither is Schleiermacherdirectlynamed(probablybecause his On

Religion was publishedanonymously n 1799). However,thereis no mistak-

ing the reference;and thereseems to me little doubtthatHegel is, in effect,

saying sarcasticallythat "the veil-makermust not be (does not choose to be)veiled himself in the greatuniversalveil of vital faith."In this case the body

(of believers) is the veil, not one to be strippedaway (cf. Hegel's earlier

interestin Volksreligion)but to be appliedto the makerof veils.23

It is in the Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) thatHegel, in termsreminis-

cent of Novalis, confronts the Sais problem integratingit to the Holy of

Holies, the emptytombof Easter,and otheremblemsof spirit.Here,the word

"curtain,"not "veil," is used; but Vorhangconformsto Germanscripture.24The passage occurs early on in the work (near the close of the section on

"consciousness")and suggests not a resolutionbut a guide towardresolu-

tion:

It is manifest that behindthe so-called curtainwhich is supposedto

conceal the inner world, there is nothing to be seen unless we gobehind it ourselves, as much in orderthatwe may see, as that there

may be somethingbehindtherewhich can be seen. But at the same

22Hegel, Faith and Knowledge (Albany, 1977), 150-51.

23My gratitude again to Peter Fenves for recalling Nietzsche's word-play in Ecce

Homo (Werke,3 vols.; ed. Karl Schlechta, [Munich, 1954], II, 1149): "Fichte, Schelling,

Schopenhauer,Hegel, Schleiermachergebuhrt dies Wort so gut wie Kant und Leibniz, essind Alles blosse Schleiermacher."

24 Luther's Bible translatesour "veil of the temple" by Vorhangor Furhang.

350



time it is evident that we cannot without more ado go straightwaybehind appearance.25

Hegel's meaning would appear to be the following. Against Kantian

transcendentalismhe arguesthat it is quite obvious (tautological)that if westop at a curtainof appearanceswhich we have ourselves hung between our

consciousness andreality,we shall see only the appearances.Yet philosophyhas the mission and obligation to know reality;otherwise it is a fluctuatingand paltry thing (ibid., Preface). But "spirit,"which will turnout to be the

real agent of this quest, must first learn to know itself as spirit throughthe

pedagogical voyage of phenomenology. Hegel combines the banal notion

thatnothingis to be seen behind the curtainbecauseit occludes oursightwith

the moreperplexingone thatnothingis thereuntil we arethere,as spirit.We

mustgo to see, butalso so that theremay be somethingto see: ourselves.The

goddess of nature s no longerbehindthis veil, threateningdeathto interlop-

ers, for spiritrecognizesspirit (knows itself in andfor itself) as immortal,and

recognizes nature simply as its own "otherness."We do not violate any

divinitybehindthe veil, because ourapprenticeshiporworship(no longerin

theprecinctsof Sais, butin the whole recapitulated xperience[Erfahrung] f

culture)raisesus to spirit,at the sametimeraisingthe veil or curtain not that

the word aufheben is operative in Schiller's "Veiled Image"as well as in

Hegel's technical vocabulary). In this truthwe have a true vision of our-

selves: we not only "gaze"(schauen) but we "see" (einsehen). This is the

culminationand the end of our "amazement."We grasp how Hegel has dealt with the goodness of natureand with

mortality and the threat of the sublime. But how has he dealt with the

"sensuousveil" of Humboldt?He has assimilatedit to the phenomenologi-cal Bildungout of which spiritarises andhas preservedor memorialized t in

a secure quarterof "absoluteknowing."What,then, is Hegel's Christology?

Briefly, it would seem to rest on two principles:(1) The Incarnation s an

absolute moment of the life of the divine, uniting God and man; in this

respect God has already advanced from behind the veil (not a la Pascal,assumed a new one)-or, put in more Hegelian language, "essence must

appear" Das Wesenmuss erscheinen). (2) However, Christ is substantiallyabsent from his community,having died as a man, and has left the Spirit in

us, andwith us, to dwell amongus, as he promised.This is the spiritwe are

andthat we seek behindthe veil.

Such an unorthodoxChristology-through not precisely a straightfor-ward "pneumatology"-has led some Jewish scholars to claim that the

Hegelian way leads logically to a pureand refinedJudaicmonotheism.26That

25 Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, tr. A. V. Miller (Oxford, 1977), 103.26

See Shlomo Avineri, "The Fossil and the Phoenix," regardingthe Hegelianism ofNachman Krochmal, in R. L. Perkins (ed.), History and System: Hegel's Philosophy of

History (Albany, 1984); and comments on this by Leo Rauch, 47-71.

John Rawls 351




view must, however, be rejected not only because Hegel was most often

scathingaboutJudaismbut because of his complex trinitarianmediations.It

has been more plausibly argued that Hegel has a doctrine of "the double

trinity." Be that as it may, he would seem to have a doctrine of "two

veils"-a Golgothan rupturedveil when the truth of spirit was affirmedabove the law of duty, a second peaceful lifting of the veil affirming spirit'ssecurepossession of its sanctuary.

Concerningthe use of the word "veil" in the sense of a "disguisingor

obscuring medium or influence," the OED notes: "common in the nine-

teenth century."This frequency is not unconnected to the emigration of

thoughtandvocabularyof the Goethezeit o Englandby way of admirers ike

Coleridge and Carlyle. Although it is sometimes held, far less often bystudents of literaturethan by social science historians, that the culture of

VictorianEngland-empirical, utilitarian,and bourgeois-was at the antipo-des of GermanInnerlichkeit, his is surely false. J. S. Mill's Systemof Logic

(which itself madeconcessions to the aestheticimagination)was not the only

English Bible. Nor did Germanspeculativethoughtwith its notions of God,

spirit, Heimat, nature,and the Gothic simply fire up reactionaryand anti-

industrialvoices in British society. Rather, nostalgia was crossbred with

progressivismand even socialism in this translation, or Germanyseemed to

manynot only a reservoirof lofty feeling (as had been learnedfromMadame

de Stael) but also a "countryof the mind."Images of the veil travelledwith

this Germanbaggage.The English developmentof veil symbolism engages poetic myth and

mysteryas encouragedby a Schilleror a Novalis;27t reconsiders he Biblical

significance of the veil, for which it has its own native prophets; t does not

reject the Hegelian notion of the veil hung between "us"and "it"(this will

be a reference of F. H. Bradley),28 ndit acceptsthe attributionof "languageas a veil," commensurate with ideas about the historical and "natural"

developmentof language, law, and custom made familiarby the theories of

Savigny and his pupils.29To these influences, industrialand commercial

Englandadds a new style of veil, within the languageof political economy.

Among the greatVictorians,Tennysonis the seasonedpoet of veils: they

supplya majorsymbol to his sensibility,his understanding f poetics, and his

treatmentof the question of life and reality beyond knowledge, beyond the

grave.W. David Shaw has masterfully reatedthe philosophicalassumptionsof the Victorian artist, choosing the title of his work ("The Lucid Veil")

27Independently,there is also a carnal symbol of the veil in English "Gothic"novels:

see, on this, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, The Coherence of Gothic Conventions (New York,

1986), 140-75.28 F. H. Bradley, Essays on Truthand Reality (Oxford, 1914), 218.

29 See FriedrichKarl von Savigny, "On the Vocation of our Age for Legislation and

Jurisprudence," n H. S. Reiss (ed.), Political Thoughtof the GermanRomantics (Oxford,

1955), 203-7.

352



from Tennyson and showing how, throughthe medium of idealist philoso-

phy, the transcognitiveconceptionof the veil does battlewith the reflective,

representationalheory of language and truth advancedby the empiricists.30His book provides substantialbackground or the presentcursoryaccount.

Tennyson's veil is not a static but a shifting symbol. Although it can be"lucid" (in the sense that mist at twilight is light-laden, somewhat like

Humboldt's"delicate veil" impregnatedby moral value), it is also interfer-

ing andthreatening ike the veil of Isis:

O life as futile, then, as frail!

O for thy voice to soothe and bless!

Whathope of answer,or redress?

Behind the veil, behind the veil.31 In Memoriam,LVI, 25-28)

This is not, however, exactly an Isis situation. What threatens is not aninscribed challenge-a dare-but an unanswered, perhaps unanswerable

question-the meaningof life, the recoveryof the dead, which has not been

satisfied for Tennysonby the clarityof the Crucifixionand the revelationof

the Holy of Holies, but must still be sought-if anywhere-behind a veil of

nature. And as Shaw notes, in Tennyson's working of this poem the dead

Hallamis reconstitutedn life as a comforter,having previouslybeen imagedas a veiled statue.

Thereis anotherstanzaby Tennysonwhich suggests thatthe lifting of the

veil from what is of truevalue is the work of chanceand devotion:

All preciousthings, discover'd late,To those thatseek them issue forth;For love in sequel workswith fate,And draws the veil from hiddenworth.32

("The Arrival"from The Daydream)

Diligence, loyalty, the voyage of deepeningknowledge, the quest-all these

areTennysonian hemes launchedat the targetof theveil, butone shouldadd,

by veiled means-the power of memorycontrivedin language.

Accordingto Augustine's Christian eaching,the "veil of language"was

inimical to faith and truth:embellishmentsof rhetoricand of poetic conceit

distracted he believer fromthe simplicity of the gospels. "The veils hangingbefore the entranceof schools of literature,"he wrote, "are not honoring

secrecy but pointing to a fabric of error"(At enim vela pendent liminibus

grammaticarum scholarum sed non illa magis honorem secreti quam

30W. David Shaw, TheLucid Veil: Poetic Truth n the VictorianAge (Madison, 1987).31Tennyson, Poems (New York, 1883), 442.32

Ibid., 275.

John Rawls 353




tegumentum erroris significant).33 But the Victorians, if distant heirs of

Augustine's own rhetoric,were not slaves to his precaution.Moreover, it

came to be arguedthat language was not a tapestrywoven by poets, but a

sharedmedium of social life. "Language,"declaredthe philologist F. Max

Miiller in a lecturedelivered in 1861, "is like a veil that,hung too over theeyes of the human mind ... was hardly perceived."34

We have seen thatTennyson'spoetics treated anguagebothas a veil and

as an optical means. Max Miiller intendssomethingquite different.For him,

language is a veil precisely because it is not, grosso modo, a spontaneous

productof the humanimagination: t is not parole, it is langue. It is a veil

largelyunperceivedbecause its development s almostpurelyunconsciousor

"natural"-if human, then beyond the scope of human intent, a collective,not an autonomous,project,not within the opticalrangeof the mind. We use

it, we speak laws. If this sounds very much like the image of commercial

society constructedby Ferguson,Adam Smith, and others, a world of trans-action "createdby human action but not by humandesign," this may be no

accident. However, the intentions of historical linguistics are powerfullydistinct from those of political economy in two ways: the "laws" of lan-

guage are historical or diachronic(e.g., Grimm's law, Werer's law), and

they are national,not cosmopolitan.

Arguably,GeorgeEliot was one of the best informedpersonsof her time

over the range of Germanliteratureand thought. The translatorof Feuer-

bach's Das Wesen des Christentumswas uniquely gifted to draw upon

variantsof the veil image discussed above. She knew Max Miiller'swork andwas appreciativeof it.35Indeed, as Peter Fenves has brilliantlyshown in a

recent article, her story "Janet'sRepentance" rom the collection Scenes ofClerical Life is, at the level of symbolic structure,a demonstration hat"the

morean individualcan expresshimself within society ... because society and

languageresist manipulation....36Human social historycomes close to being"naturalhistory"(cf. a similarjudgment, though from a differentangle, byFlaubert: o Louise Colet, 31 March1853; to Mlle. Levoyerde Chantepie,18

March1857)37on the Savignian-Miillerian ccount,because the unperceivedveil of languageforbids the individualmanipulationof expression.

George Eliot also inherits from the Schiller-Novalis-Hegel"Sais"tradi-

tion, in which the veil performsanotherkind of operation."YourGerman, t

is said,"she tells us in one of her essays, "cannotwrite aboutdramawithout

33The Confessions of Augustine, ed. J. Gibb and W. Montgomery (New York, 1980),22.

34 F. Max Miiller, TheScience of Language: Lectures Delivered at the Royal Institute

in 1861 and 1863 (2 vols.; New York, 1891), I, 36.35 Gordon S. Haight (ed.), TheGeorge Eliot Letters (9 vols.; New Haven, 1955), IV, 8.

36 Peter Fenves, "Exiling the Encyclopedia: The Individual in 'Janet's Repentance,' "Nineteenth CenturyLiterature,40 (1987), 425.

37 Gustave Flaubert,Correspondance (9 vols.; Paris, 1926-33), II, 154; IV, 164.

354



going back to the Egyptian mysteries...."38And it appears that her own

dramaas an artist was similarly implicated.In her curiousstory "The Lifted

Veil" (obviously echoing the thematics of Schiller's "Das Verschleierte

Bild") she presents a protagonistLatimerwho, Sais-like, is driven to, and

evenpredicts,his death by means of a "doubleconsciousness"(not

distant

from a certain pathological employment of Selbstbewusstsein-a capacitythatlingers ironicallybetweendeceptionandclairvoyance).Eliot's notion of

the double consciousness is furtherclarifiedby a passage from some rather

pedanticand condescendingremarksabouther in HerbertSpencer'sAutobi-

ography(he was for about a year, describedby the authoras "a more active

year," a frequentcompanion and perhapsher lover): "She complained of

being troubledby doubleconsciousness-a currentof self-criticismbeing an

habitual accompanimentof anything she was saying or doing: and this

naturallytended towards self-deception and self-distrust."39

"Double consciousness"might be for the artist a terriblefeeling about

inadequacyof talent before the demands of fulfillment; or it might mean

simply the intellectual's lot: to have, in the words of Camus, "a mind that

watches itself." At either level, this split personality (cf. Benjamin Con-

stant's dedoublement) s not easy to manage,and cried for resolution.There

is every reasonto think thatGeorge Eliot experiencedboth these tensions at

once and expressedthemin her story,whose final effect was liberating.40

Latimer,the hero of "The Lifted Veil," is clairvoyant,like the inscrip-tion of Sais. Since he is doomedto lift the veil, he mustdie:knowingnot only

that but when he will die motivates his narrative;he is somewhat in theposition of Schiller's doomed "Lehrling."When Latimer"lifts the veil of

nature" rom his fellow humanbeings, he is seized with horrorby the truths

he discovers, for he is party to their states of consciousness: the dead are

awakenedonly to carryout their selfish and criminaldesigns. But beyond

this, Latimer is an artist who is prevented by the veil from creating or

"seeing":had this not been so, he could have fulfilled himself. He sees (is

clairvoyant)-but had he been blind (like Homeror Milton), he would have

achieved works of art. He cannotgo behind the curtainandfind himself there

as "spirit."His damnation s to see only floating shapesof what Hegel might

describe as a disordered"Geisterreich."This is the story of George Eliot's

strugglewith her own sense of worth;but it is also her interpretation f the

artist'sproblemwith his veil, seen from the perspectiveof the doom of Sais.

When, after many transactions, "The Lifted Veil" finally appeared in

Blackwood's (in 1859-the year of Marx and Darwin), it was anonymous;

38George Eliot, "A Word for the Germans,"in T. Pinney (ed.) Essays (New York,

1963), 389.39 HerbertSpencer,Autobiography(2 vols.; London, 1904), I, 459.

40 George Eliot, "The Lifted Veil," in The Works of George Eliot (24 vols.;Edinburgh, 1878-85), XXIII, 257-342. My colleague Neil Hertzpoints to Eliot's importantuse of "double consciousness" in Daniel Deronda, ch. 51.

John Rawls 355



George ArmstrongKelly

and it has never received the attention it deserves. Veils and the double

consciousness are a hallmark of Eliot: and this story features them with

singulareffect.

The veil continuedto have a power in English letters. Let us finish this

part of the discussion with one brief example. At the end of the grippingdetective novel The Valley of Fear, its narratorDr. Watsonrelates:"We all

sat in silence for some minuteswhile those fatefuleyes still strained o piercethe veil."41Even the positivistic SherlockHolmes, as renderedby his spiritu-alistic creator A. Conan Doyle, is captive to that ancient image while

contemplating he criminal network of the incomparableProfessorMoriarty

(whose eclipse will be in the sublime setting and sublime moment of the

struggle at Reichenbach Falls-a "veil" or "curtain"of water).

The foundationof political economy as a "science" with "laws" par-

takes of the same general impulse as enlightenment'sunveiling of natureto

create, alternatively, a belle nature relieved of particularblemishes or a

physical science orderedunder law-like regularities.It requiresthe abstract

creationof a new deity called Society that displaces Yahweh's commands

with a multiple,butreliable,statisticalarrangement f humantendenciesand

"interests,"a psychology amounting to a hidden or "veiled" order. This

version of naturewas not, of course,won without a concertedeffortto subdue

the unruly passions of human "projectors"by a new domestication of

conduct released from God and mandated o Society. A. O. Hirschmanhas

given us the plot of this story in his perceptive The Passions and theInterests; J. G. A. Pocock has furtherprobed one sort of resistance to the

mania of veiled "publiccredit"within the discourse of classical republican-ism.42

In such a precariousscience, it might be expected that implicationsof a

veil might arise. It was not the intentionof the foundersof the "science of

society"-and of political economy-to make their subject arcane, but it

would be the role of their critics to claim thatthey had done this. Here Marx

deservesprideof place. His attackwas, fromthe beginning,launchedagainstthe commodity-money-commodity cycle. Marx was a sort of humanist

prophetbeforehe became a convertto the deity of Society with its economic

liturgyof class struggle.In 1844 the immortalityof money prepossessedhim:

"It changes fidelity into infidelity, love into hate, virtue into vice, vice into

virtue, servant into master, stupidity into intelligence and intelligence into

stupidity."43Money, for Marx, was the veil, the symbolic creator of the

41 ArthurConan Doyle, The Valley of Fear (332), in The Complete Sherlock Holmes

(New York, 1930).42

See especially J. G. A. Pocock, Virtue,Commerceand History (Cambridge, 1985),69f, 113f.

43 T. S. Bottomore (ed.), Karl Marx: Early Writings(New York, 1964), 193.

356



"inverted world" (verkehrte Welt), "the confusion and transpositionof all

natural and human qualities."44We should not forget here that Hegel'sremarkableexposition of the "invertedworld"occurs in the passage imme-

diately precedinghis challenge to "go behindthe Vorhang" n the Phenom-

enology.Marx's way of going behindthe veil in bourgeois society in 1844-his

"unmasking"-was twofold: (1) to reveal money as something that "con-

founds and exchanges everything";and (2) to disclose (like othersocialists)a specific connectionbetween money and carnality,reviving the Isis innu-

endo with bitter irony. As he and Engels proclaimed in the Manifesto of

1848:

On what foundations is the present family, the bourgeois family,based? On capital,on privategain. In its completely developed form

this family exists only amongthe bourgeoisie.But this stateof thingsfinds its complement n the practicalabsenceof the family amongthe

proletarians,and in public prostitution....45

The bourgeois is carnal,and seeks his pleasureamongthe wives and daugh-ters of the workingclass, who aresold, who have no family. Thebourgeoisis

also rich, or in a position to become so: a veil of money in the "inverted

world" rules all his arrangements.The communityof propertyand of women

are the logical results of an unveiledhumanity.

The "verkehrteWelt" is also the world of religion for Marx (one mightsay it includes boththe old religionand thenew one). Thereis an excursuson

this in the firstvolume of Capitalbefore Marxreturns o his insistenttopic of

the "magic ... that surrounds he productsof labouras long as they take the

form of commodities."46"The life process of society," Marx declares,"which is based on the process of materialproduction,does not stripoff its

mystical veil until it is treatedas productionby freely associatedman, and is

consciously regulated by them in accordancewith a settled plan...."47Later

on he expostulates about the "magic of money."48"Everycommodity,"he

declares, "on becoming money, disappears as a commodity...."49 As he had

put it in 1844, money is a mediating and "genuinelycreative power"50:t

mediates and creates surplus value as a middle between two points of

commodity valuation in the capitalist system of exchange. And "that this

44 bid.45K. Marx and F. Engels, The CommunistManifesto (Arlington Heights, Ill., 1955),

27.

46 Karl Marx, Capital (New York, 1936), I, 87.47 Ibid., 92.

48 Ibid., 105.49 Ibid., 124.50 Marx, Early Writings, 192.

John Rawls 357



George ArmstrongKelly

one-sided characterof money's motion arises out of the two-sided character

of the commodity's motion is a circumstance hat is veiled over."5'Money

veils, and its action is veiled. For "[money] exchanges every quality and

objectfor everyother,even though they arecontradictory.... It] is the general

inversion of individualities, urningthem into theiropposites andassociatingcontradictoryqualities with their qualities."52 t is a veil that makes the

unjustpossible. It sells the bodies of proletarianwomen to bourgeoisvolup-tuaries.It transferscommoditiesfromcapitaliststo buyerswithoutregardfor

ajust value or for the rightfulownerof thatvalue.

Marx's "veil of money" or "magic of money" might seem more poeticthanscientific. For example, on the performanceof actualsocialist societies

it is doubtful that money, as a function of production,can be "consciously

regulated [by freely associatedmen] in accordancewith a settled plan."But

the status of money also remained elusive for the "classical" political

economists. Nassau Senior wrote in conviction of the intrinsic regulatory

power of money.53But J. S. Mill dissented:

Therecannot, in short,be intrinsicallya more insignificantthing, in

the economy of society, than money.... It is a machine for doing

quicklyandcommodiouslywhat would be done, thoughless quicklyandcommodiously,withoutit; and like manyotherkinds of machin-

ery, it only exerts a distinct and independentinfluence of its own

when it gets out of order.54

Money has no Marxiandiabolismhere;but there is an unease in expressingthe rapportbetween money and commoditiesrepresented,commodities that

historicallybegat money-and, in mercantilist heory,were frozenwithin it.

Mill sees it as a kind of vanishing point of the substantial,a "mere unit of

calculation ... a money account, called macutes."55

Money seemed ungraspablewithin the principlesof economic theory, a

mere convenience for the efficient movement of the world's goods and

services.56In textbooks of economics it was like a veil drawnbetween the

entities of commodity and capital (or credit). In this embarrassmentof

definition there were suggestions that Victorian linguistics had not been

without influence on economic theory. Rogers writes in his Political

Economy:"[T]hefunctionsof money in the act of exchange presenta close

51 Marx,Capital, I, 129.52 Marx, Early Writings, 193.53 NassauWilliamSenior,ThreeLectureson the Valueof Money London,1840),8-

10.54 J. S. Mill,Principlesof PoliticalEconomyLondon,1940),bk. III,ch. 7, para.3,

482.

55Ibid., 484.56 William Stanley Jevons, Money and the Mechanism of Exchange (London, 1875),

13-16.

358



analogy to the functions of language in relation to thought."57 . Shields

Nicholson repeats: "'money,' with few exceptions, is as essential to the

exchange of commodities or services as language is for the exchange of

thoughtor ideas."58Money, then, was a kind of semiology of the economy.

Did this furthermean, a la Miiller,thatmoney enclosed the "naturalhistory"of exchange, as a veil too close to be perceived;or did it mean, a la Hegel,that we need to go behind the veil of money-the intricateveil of "civil

society"-to discover ourselves?

About forty years, A. C. Pigou, one of the leading students of Alfred

Marshall,publisheda briefbook for the laymancalled The Veilof Money, in

which he explains:

In the yearsprecedingthe first world war therewere in commonuse

among economists a number of metaphors, all of a like general

tendency, about the role of money. "Money is a wrapperin which

goods come to you": "moneyis the garmentdrapedroundthe bodyof economic life";"moneyis the veil behindwhich the action of real

economic forces is concealed." The mercantilists, it was said, in

theirblindness,mistook money for wealth;we must not do that.We

must stripoff the garment, earaway the veil, look through he thingto the thing signified....

59

It must be said that this "Plutarchianmoment"of English political economy

does not exactly deliverunveiledpromises.Pigou concludesindecisively that"money clearly is ... but [is] not merely a veil...."6 The veil is conceived of

as a "garment .. [that ] became a Nessus shirt."He proposes a theory of

interdependence: as the economic body alters ... the veil thatshrouds,or the

garmentthat enwrapsit, alters it also."61Money is conceived more a "gar-ment"(perhapsa carapace)than a "veil," to fit the body of economic life,

although its fit is presumedto "result from given changes initiated in the

body andwhatreactionthey, or the lack of them, in turnproduce[depending]on how the garment s constructed."62

Up to now, we have been accustomedto regarding he veil as a kind of

straightcurtain,opaqueor translucent, hat impedes normalrepresentationalvision or refracts it into a new mode of penetration.But here the veil has

become analogousto a garmentor a wrapper-a bill of lading on a cargo or

box for merchandiseor a designer's dress. Threatening, f it does not fit the

57J. E. T. Rogers, A Manual of Political Economyfor Schools and Colleges (Oxford,

1876),22.58 J. S. Nicholson, Principles of Political Economy (2 vols.; London, 1922), II, 90.

59 A. C. Pigou,TheVeilof Money London,1949),18.60 Ibid., 25.61

Ibid., 27.62 Ibid.

John Rawls 359




commodity or the needs of exchange, to become a "Nessus shirt," it no

longerfunctions as a Ding-an-sich, a limit daringtransgression,or an occlud-

ing device protecting he sanctuaryof dangerous ruth.Ithas become a veil of

economic fashion or convenience and, equally, a self-sustaining veil of

ignorance.

The "veil of ignorance"brings us to Rawls, who regardshis hypotheti-cal device as a necessaryaccoutrement o the rationalchoice of principlesof

a just society by its founding members. My point will not (mainly) be to

criticize Rawls's method,but to attempta genealogical interpretation f his

contrivance.

Of the numerouscriticisms(for the literatures endless) lodged againstA

Theoryof Justice, one of the most specious is thatthe author gnoreshistory.The book is in fact a sort of congealed history. Amid all the abstract

conditions and postulates that Rawls proposes, the sensitive readerrecog-nizes and responds to a history of the theory of justice written en sous-

entendu. Thatimpression,of course,becomes even more certainif one takes

into account Rawls's later revision of whatonce mighthave seemed a theorywith transcendentalclaims into a rationalizationof the ethos of modem

constitutionaldemocracy (a species of regime with a development and a

history): see, especially, Rawls's "Justiceas Fairness: Political not Meta-

physical."63That retreat from "universality" o "generality"axiomaticallymakes the prescriptionsof A Theory of Justice contingent upon common

understandings,not groundeddirectlyin a variantof Kant'spracticalreason.But the point is not important o ourargument-inasmuch as the veil is in no

wise abandoned. It simply provides us with a stronger justification for

approachingRawls as we do, throughthe historyof an image.For Rawls did not introduce he veil of ignorancecasually or, as it were,

merely functionally.The immediatenotion may have come from Pigou and

his predecessors in political economy; but behind them there is a rich

"phenomenology"not unlike the one I have been describing,fromwhich the

metaphordescends. The cultureof Rawls is the culture throughwhich the

veil passes, more specifically the culture of Hellenic and Hebraicclassics,

seen through the Enlightenment and through German idealism, throughVictorian literature,English political economy, and their legacies. Since

Rawls has absorbed and textually impounded all this, we should not be

surprised o find RichardRorty, writing half-admiringly,half-disparaginglyof this text:

It is a book which descends straightfrom Kant, Mill, and Sidgwick.The same book could have been written if logical positivism had

63 John Rawls, "Justiceas Fairness:Politicalnot Metaphysical," hilosophyand

Public Affairs, XIV (1985), 223-51.

360



never existed. It is not a triumphof "analytic"philosophizing. It is

simply the best updateof liberal social thoughtwhich we have.64

This is certainlycorrect,so long as we do not takeRorty's evaluationto be a

statement of his own pragmatism.If after a long slumberof creative confi-dence (cf. the "veil" of George Eliot) political theoristssuddenlymade this

work a focus of adoration and dispute, it was because, in England and

America, they recognizedthat the task of Kant,Mill, Green, and Hobhouse

was again being shoulderedby a formidablyculturedwriter. Without the

benefit of clerisy, theorists elsewhere havejoined this swell, as much in awe

of tradition as from admirationof analysis. The Rawlsian veil is a case in

point of how this idea might be construed.

The veil, it must be said at the outset, is one of specified or stipulated

ignorance, intended to insure justice as "the result of fair agreement or

bargain"(TJ, 12). "Fairness" s a kind of symmetry of rationalmorality,

fraughtwith constructivepotential but initially impoverishedin content. It

incorporateswhat Rawls takes to be Kant's view of autonomy,a choice of

principlesof action "asthe most adequateexpressionof [one's] natureas free

and equal rational being" (TJ, 252)-i.e., a "kingdom of ends" that is

somehow within us, not merely "regulative"but "constitutive" for pur-

poses of the primalcivil act. Fairnesswould appear o assumethe capacityof

a sense of justice, the disposition to decide on its first principles, and a

determination o abideby them in the furtherarticulationof social rules and

institutions.To this is added Rousseau's precautionthat "each necessarilysubmitsto the conditions thathe imposes on others"(Contrat social, II, iv).The commentthatthis is a "kingdomof ends" constitutiveof (ust) society is

not causal:the mission is unanimity,and the "originalposition"is described

as "thepoint of view fromwhich noumenalselves see the world"(TJ, 255).These are ratherpeculiarnoumenalselves. Thoughthey are conceived of

as "rational and mutually disinterested"(TJ, 13) and hence they do not

"suffer from envy" (TJ, 143; cf. Rousseau's amour-propre):"they know

that in general they must try to protecttheir liberties,widen theiropportuni-

ties, and enlarge their means for promotingtheir aims whatever these are"

(ibid.). One could perhapscall them liberal noumenalselves on the basis ofthese attributesand also because of their temporalfacility for donning the

veil of ignoranceand subscribingto society at any given moment (TJ, 138).

Indeed, they are noumena guided by rational choice theory: "they would

prefermore primarysocial goods than less" (TJ, 142), and they are clearlyinhibitedby the fearthat "moremightmean less." The functionof the veil is

to furtherdeterminethe noumenalselves to choose so as to "get the desired

result"(TJ, 136), preventingthe outcome from being affectedby "forceand

cunning (ibid.).

64RichardRorty, Consequences of Pragmatism (Minneapolis, 1982), 216.

John Rawls 361




The constraintsof the veil are these:

... no one knows his place in society, his class position or social

status; nor does he know his fortune in the distributionof natural

assets and abilities, his intelligence and strength,and the like. Nor,again, does anyoneknow his conceptionof the good, the particularsof his rationalplan of life, or even the special featuresof his psychol-

ogy such as his aversion to risk or liability, to optimism or pessi-mism. More than this, I assume that the parties do not know the

particularcircumstances of their own society. That is, they do not

know its economic or political situation,or the level of civilization

and cultureit has been able to achieve. The persons in the original

position have no information as to which generationthey belong.(TJ, 137)

What the noumenabehind the veil do understandcan be described as the

formal idea of things: "... they know the general facts about human society.

They understandpolitical affairs and the principlesof economic theory:theyknow the bases of social organizationand the laws of human psychology.

Indeed, the partiesare presumedto know whatevergeneral facts affect the

choice of the principlesof justice" (ibid.). Aside fromthe knottyproblemof

determiningwhat exactly constitutes a "general fact," Rawls's noumenal

selves are certainly relived of the predicamentof the recurrentHegelian

figure "who would not go in the wateruntil he had learnedhow to swim."Frombehind this veil, in their "originalposition,"Rawlsian individuals

choose their two foundingprinciplesof justice, which take priorityover all

other institutions or practices that society arrangesonce the veil has been

lifted and liberal pluralism ensues. This is not very different from the

perspective of natural law, except that these are "principles,"not "laws"

-in the absence of a lawgiver-and they areconventional(if inviolable),not

natural.

Yet who has placedthe veil? The theorist.And why has he so placedit in

front of these noumena in their "originalposition"?Perhapsthere is also a

"veil theory" hatwe would want to examine. In his own words, this theoristwants to "get the desired solution" from an originarypoint of pure human

autonomy. The social noumena are to be used "deontologically";but the

theorist himself is "teleological."Yet he chooses the oppositepathfromthat

suggestedby Kant in constructinga universalhistory,of "trying o see if he

can discover a naturalpurpose n this idiotic course of thingshuman."Rawls

does this, even thoughthese "creatures.. have no plan of their own."65But

he does it, in part,because they have no (mutual, species) plan of theirown,andbecause their individualplans, if immediatelyrevealedto them in social

65 L. W. Beck (ed.) Kant on History (Indianapolis, 1963), 12.

362



transparency,would add up to sound and fury (to history), not justice. The

most severe prophets of autonomy have often been the most alert to the

travesties of the phenomenalhuman condition.

Rawls's noumena are not just "rationalbeings" but also "humanbe-

ings" who requirethe discipline of the veil above and beyond theirrationalattributes e.g. lack of envy) in the "originalposition."Behind the veil theyhave phenomenal doubles whose flesh once seen, whose desires known,would be corrupting o the discourse or practiceof justice. Although "theycan make a rational decision in the ordinarysense" (TJ, 143), can they keepit in full view of their real selves or the selves of others?As Kantwrites in

another context: "[Man] need not wait until he finds out through bitter

experienceabout the hostile attitudeof the otherman."66 hatis, in fact, why

political societies areformedandwhy Kantassigns manthe dutyto leave the

state of natureandthe rightto compel othersto do so.67Rawls has discarded

that useful fiction and substitutedhis "originalposition" so that, one sus-

pects, a "kingdomof ends" can operateto found,rather hanmerely inspire,life inter homines. Through the solemnity of their noumenal "bargain,"social selves mightbe expectedto be morehonor-bound ojustice beyondthe

veil.

As just pointed out, these parties are human, at least to the extent that

they know "generalfacts" and aspire to "primary ocial goods." This is, as

I have argued,a kind of concession of noumenologyto liberalism,but it also

reinforces the suspicion that these people already have a history of sorts,

perhapssomewhat ike that of the inchoatepeuplade thatRousseauassigns tothe ministrationsof the heroic lawgiver (Contratsocial, II, viii), but with the

express difference that these are "wise horses," not incultes. History, of

course, is contaminating o reason;and one can imaginethatit, too, is placedbehind the veil of ignorancein this Scenario.For memory is not among the

rationalattributes hatRawls mentions.Hereagain,Kantis instructive,when

he writes: "thesubjectshould not be overly curiousabout [the origin of the

supreme authority]as though the right of obedience due it were open to

doubt."68These noumenal selves have in fact been abstractedfrom originswhich it is notwise to search out (thisseems totally clarifiedby Rawls's 1985

revision). Here Rawls and Kantagree:but the veil of ignorancedoes dutyfor

the hypotheticalimperative.

Throughouthis brilliantwork, Rawls's tone is measuredand graceful,

instructive,hopeful. But there is a darker,more chthonicaspect to what lies

behindthe veil. Of the alternativeswe have canvassed, there is the Hebraic

law-not to be countenancedhere, for Kantianreasons;for it is the denial of

autonomy (self-legislation), not placed on the hitherside of the veil, and of

6 Kant, Metaphysical Elements of Justice (Indianapolis, 1965), 71.67

Ibid., 76-77.68 Ibid.,84.

363ohn Rawls




the libertythatbecomes man's freely chosen-not granted-first principleof

justice. Beyond this possibility, there is the abyss of natureand mortality:Rawls's noumenaare, in a sense, the apprentice-guardiansf the fatal curtain

as well as selves who, boundby theirbargainof justice, will be equippedto

go behindit. If they were to go there before reachingtheir"fairagreement,"or if the veil were to be peremptorily ifted, what would they find? They

would, as Hegel suggests, find themselves-pluralized creaturesof strife and

desire, a multiplicity that unity cannot contain, a swarm of uncooperative

wasps, a congeries of consumers with no single currency,a babel of life-

plans-everything Latimersaw and shrankfrom. The two formalprinciplesof justice, subscribed to before the curtain,are Rawls's noumenology ante-

cedent to the discursive, centrifugal dangers of a phenomenology which,

unregulated,would be fraughtwith "bitterexperience."The veil of ignoranceis also a "veil of language"-fixed in such a way

that social members can communicate"in an ideal speech situation" to useHabermas'sphrase)before becoming exposed to the language of the tribe,

weaving the one language into the others as if through a Humboldtian

"delicate veil" or a Tennysonian"lucid veil"; a tegument so close to the

mind's eye that it is hardlyperceivedin the passage into the world of social

appearances.And, as a language veil, it would also seem to convey this

philosopher's response to the crisis in social science and social thought-which Rorty believed that Rawls had passed over. Finally-and this maycome as the greatestsurprise-the veil of ignoranceis a "veil of charity."It

is not, to be sure, a ChristianVeil, for Rawls always speaks in the tones ofagnostic humanism.Nonetheless, if this veil cannot signify "love one an-

other,"at least it cautions "protectone anotherand be protected"from the

worst of yourselves and from the dangersof all dissemblance.The veil may

only be partedwhen a templecanstand.Buthow shallwe namewhatis in the

temple?

364

kelly-poetics of rawls (1997)

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