Reference no: EM133177818

The traditional view of society is that its members are beholden to it because they entirely depend on it. Therefore, justice is primarily conceived in terms of social duties to the political system. By contrast, the dominant model of modern justice is social contract theory. It may involve actual constitutions that function as social contracts. For philosophers, however, the idea is to imagine a society so just that all its members would agree to its terms. Its justice would earn the consent of all. In this view, the basis of justice is the right of members to be well served by government, thus ruling out exploitation by the government. The primary logistical problem of achieving consent, however, is that of representating the will of the people: our government says it serves the people, but does it really? Today, there is much evidence of discontent with our government, its representatives being accused of serving "special interests" and lobbies rather than the welfare of society as a whole. Some more skeptical people think that there really is nothing but competing interest groups, and that the idea of a politician serving "the welfare of society as a whole" is obsolete. Do you think there is any alternative to letting special interests compete for influence in Washington? Or is it still possible to identify those policies that are truly in the public interest?