On Mill’s Negative Liberty Thought

Mill’s thought of liberty occupies an important position in the history of western political thought.Mill’s thought of liberty comes from the inheritance of British classical liberalism and the critical absorption of philosophers such as Rousseau and Hegel’s thought of liberty,with a strong color of utilitarianism.On the basis of distinguishing the two concepts of liberty,Berlin holds that Mill’s thought of liberty contains negative elements of liberty.Mill’s negative liberty thought mainly consists of two parts: one is to reveal the danger of positive liberty by explaining the abuse of power,the tyranny of majority and the tendency of authoritarian government latent in representative system;The second is to reveal the value of negative liberty from the perspective of maintaining individual liberty,thought liberty and gender equality.There is a certain contradiction between Mill’s positive free thought and negative free thought.This kind of contradiction implies the contradiction of value orientation--the contradiction between particularism and universalism,utilitarianism and liberty,pluralistic value and ultimate value,thus exposing the coherence of Mill’s theory.In addition,Mill’s negative liberty implies the tendency of value hierarchy theory,which takes utilitarianism as the ultimate value and liberty and other values as the secondary value.The ultimate value is expressed by the secondary value,and the secondary value resolves the value contradiction between each other by the final judgment of the ultimate value.They complement each other and form Mill’s value system together.Mill’s free thought shows a tendency of dichotomy and compromise,but his negative free thought,as one of the starting points to solve many contradictions,shows a possibility to solve the problem of theoretical coherence.The representative government system constructed by Mill on the basis of the principle of non-harm has a special educational and reference significance for modern liberty theory and modern democratic political construction.