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Wed 11 Nov 2002Philosopher who changed the debateHe was certain he would die as an American soldier in the Pacific during the second World War, writes Vincent Browne. At the time he had decided to become a Protestant minister but, having survived the war, he became an academic and changed the ground rules for political debate, maybe for hundreds of years.He was terribly shy, partly because of a speech impediment. He was kind, diffident, warm and perhaps the greatest political philosopher for more than 100 years and, in the views of many, among the world's top 10 political philosophers. He was John Rawls and he died on Sunday near Boston of heart failure, aged 82.