Research On Isaiah·Berlin’s Liberal Thoughts

This study aims to explore the true meaning of Berlin’s liberal thoughts and its possibility of evolutionary orientation through the sorting and analysis of his theories and then further helps to understand his theory’s application boundary and meaning. Liberty is the field where an individual can act without any barriers. But the liberty values and its development boundaries are always of main debates among philosophers and thinkers. The traditional liberalism which is characterized by universalism and rationality has dominated human society for hundreds years and came to its extreme forms in20th century. Berlin’s study and his classification of two concepts of liberty provide new connotations and orientation to understand liberty. The research results are listed as follows:First, liberty and the conditions for realizing liberty are distinctive. An individual is not able to be considered as being forced if he can’t realize liberal state because of inability. Second, negative liberty is defined as the freedom from, that is, the absence of constraints on the agent imposed by other people. Negative liberty has its evolutionary boundary. Third, positive liberty, as Berlin defined, is both as freedom to, that is, the ability (not just the opportunity) to pursue and achieve willed goals; and also as autonomy or self-rule, as opposed to dependence on others. Negative liberty and positive liberty may coexist in harmony and also may conflict with each other.Berlin’s value pluralism believes that genuine values are many-and often do-come into conflict with one another. The connection between pluralism and negative liberty is that pluralism can protect people’s multiple liberty values from violation. Positive liberty, if conform to the rules of pluralism, is not able to develop to its extreme forms. Actors act in a self-rule, rational and autonomous manner and abide by rules of not to violate individual’s personal field, positive liberty is of no danger.Berlin’s literal thoughts, especially his classification of two liberties and value pluralism, contribute a lot to the development of human’s liberal thoughts and political liberty theories. However, there is still bewilderment in Berlin’s theories. The identification of the boundary of that "field which is changeable but explicit", the how-to of prevent positive liberty from going to extreme and the compatibility between liberty and value pluralism are still in debates and needed to be confined and studied further.