Try From Mill's Freedom Of Thought

Liberalism is the main line of bourgeois political thoughts. Meanwhile, it's also the ruling ideology of western countries. As the main representative of libertinism of 19th century, J.S.Mill based his theory upon the fact that capitalism was translating itself from classicality to modern era. On the one hand, his theory inherited the basic standpoint of classical liberalism, regarding the protection and realization of personal liberty as the core of liberalism. On the other hand, it cast off the shackles of political liberty and reconstructed the principles of liberalism from a wider angle of social liberty, which was based on the division of personal right and social power. This presented a wider field of view for the study of liberalism. At the same time, Mill also both inherited and revised Bentham's utilitarianism,inosculated the principle of liberalism with the principle of utilitarianism. He no longer took liberty as natural right, but explores the realization of liberty on the basis of utilitarianism and raised the theory of limited government intervention. It gave the ideal of liberty a realistic foundation. All these theoretical innovations made Mill's liberalistic political thoughts as a bridge which connected classical liberalism and neo-liberalism together. At the same time, they also made liberalism have a grumous character of eclecticism. As one of the turning point in the development of liberalism, Mill's thought on liberty would be very valuable for us to grasp the origination and vicissitude of liberalism.This thesis is constituted by six parts:The preface introduces the historical status of liberalism, Mill's life, the background of his theory and his position in the process of the development of liberalism briefly. Meanwhile, it presents the methodologies and instruments applied in this thesis.Chapter 1 analyses the comments on classical liberalism from Mill. Prior to the formal analysis, the author summarizes the theory of classical liberalism and its historical status during the development of liberalism. Meanwhile, he explains the relationship between Mill and classical liberalism. Based on the above introduction, this chapter discussed the comments on classical liberalism from Mill in there subsections: the comments on philosophic naturalism, the comments on the utilitarianism's opinion of vulgar happiness, the comments on automistic individualism and social construct.Chapter 2 focuses on the meaning of Mill's liberalism. Firstly, this chapter generalizes Mill's idea of liberalism, and further, introduces it on the following five aspects respectively and in detail: the category of liberty, the standard of liberty, the subject of liberty, the obstacles of liberty and the target of liberty.Chapter 3 mainly analyzes how Mill demonstrates liberty. This chapter adopts the method of comparison which can reveal the uniqueness of Mill's demonstration on liberty. From these analyses, we can realize that Mill did not use the tools that others had used before, such as the principle of right, the monism of ethical value. He demonstrated the necessity and importance of liberty from the following three lays: utilitarianism, scepticism and the principal of harm.Chapter 4 mainly elaborates the polynary and eclectic character of Mill's thoughts on liberty. It is departed into four parts: the coexisting of positive liberty and negative liberty, the coexisting of evolutional rationalism and constructive rationalism, the theory of limited laissez faire on government intervention, the coexisting of liberty as a goal and the liberty as a tool.In the part of conclusion, the author further points out the essential of Mill's liberalism and discusses the effect of Mill's liberalism on the afterwards political society construction of British, Western Europe, and even the nowadays of our country.