Based On The Distinction Of "Two Concepts Of Liberty" To Explore Berlin’s Liberalism

As an important value of human civilization,liberty has always been a vital theme pursued by humans.The different interpretations of the concept of liberty by philosophers in history have formed different ideological systems.Liberty still plays an important role in human life with its vitality so far.And among many philosophers,Isaiah Berlin has an important position in the history of liberal thought,and his multi-values liberalism is widely accepted.His liberal ideas broke the tradition of classical liberalism and opened up a new path for liberalism.This paper attempts to demonstrate that Berlin’s multi-values liberalism can be justified and is self-consistent in Berlin’s own thinking.The article discusses this point through the content of three chapters.Chapter 1 introduces the theoretical origins of Berlin’s two concepts of liberty,the connotation and limitations of positive liberty and negative liberty.From the aspect of the purpose of human life,Berlin limits the scope of liberty to the political field,and he believes that the social reality of the twentieth century is the result of the distortion of classical liberalism,after investigating the history of traditional liberalism.Re-reflection of liberty has become a top priority,so Berlin divides liberty into negative liberty and positive liberty,and generalizes the first as “liberty from...”and the second as “to do...”.The two kinds of liberties corresponds to rights and abilities respectively.Based on the redefinition of the concept of liberty,Berlin elaborates on the specific connotations of the two liberties and emphasizes the priority and inviolability of negative liberty.Chapter 2 argues Berlin’s thought of value pluralism.The consequence of the abuse of positive liberty is rational monism in theory,and totalitarianism in reality.With the critique of the Enlightenment and historical determinism,Berlin points out the defects of rational monism and put forward the idea of value pluralism.Berlin proves that the value pluralism is a better solution to the problems Berlin faces compared with the rational monism.Chapter 3 discusses how Berlin’s liberalism could be justified and tries to argue that his accounts about liberalism is theoretically self-consistent in its overall thinking.Here,through the arguments of life and humanity,this paper defends Berlin’s multi–values liberalism and highlights the far-reaching influence of Berlin in the history of liberal thought.