Hooker Probe Into The Concept Of Liberty To

Sidney Hook (1902—1989) was an American contemporary philosopher of pragmatism and the western famous scholar in Marxism theory. His outlook of freedom was the key to understand his political philosophy.On the ideological legacy of Thomas Jefferson, Karl Marx and Charles sanders Peirce he inherited from John Dewey and on the basis of practice formed a concept of freedom, which was the logical result from the criticism on the three outlooks of freedom prevailing in his period: theory of the freedom of the will, of the conscience and of the laissez-faire.He demonstrated the intrinsic logical process of his concept of freedom, that was, the freedom of scientific inquire from such angles as ontology, epistemology, methodology, logics and political philosophy. This dissertation, from theses angles, analysed this logical process according to the thoughts of "what", "why", and "how"Through the critical analysis of "instrument", he first explored the characteristics of human nature and the world, and then located the position of human freedom, that is, the link between human pluralistic purposive demands and the plurality of the latent tendencies of numerous factors in their environment.So whether or not the knowledge of the self and the world can be acquired becomes a determining power for the acquisition of freedom. He also argued, under the framework of the existing outlooks of world and human nature, it was the experimental logic that was the most effective way for acquiring knowledge, not deductive logic or inductive logic. Scientific inquire, the realistic equivalence of that logic, is the best even the only effective way for us to acquire knowledge and strengthen beliefs.Experimental logic requires the method of the scientific inquire be applied to all the fields of human life. Hence, the freedom of scientific inquire becomes the key point for the acquisition of human freedom.The existence of paradox of freedom indicates that it is necessary to apply the method of scientific inquire to the social systems. As a logical inevitability of this application, changes must be brought forth in social systems, resulting in an establishment of a democratic socialist society as a social means. This is the condition as well as the result of freedom of scientific inquire.Therefore, the elaborate system of his outlook of freedom has been established from ontology to political philosophy. His concept of freedom is heuristic for understanding contemporary liberalism' s challenge against Isaiah Berlin' s pluralism and Communitarianism' s criticism, because his outlook of freedom, just like Berlin' s, is based on the acknowledgement of paradox of freedom, moreover, Sidney Hook answered many questions Berlin could not. Contemporary Communitarism and liberalism swerves to deliberation in argumentation, but only Sidney Hook' s outlook of freedom provides a better theory of deliberation which blazes a new way for clinching the arguments between liberalism and communitarism. Besides, his outlook of freedom, just a compromise of disagreements between liberalism and communitarism., can be a theoretical enlightenment to combine liberalism and communitarism..Anyway, Sidney Hook' s concept of freedom has theoretical loopholes, in such matters as the objectivity, credibility, freedom of scientific exploration, the application of the forming of social basis and realistic power of reason. All in all, the theoretical mistakes in his outlook of freedom lie in incomplete application of his method of scientific exploration, rather than in his advocate of the freedom of scientific exploration.Deficiencies exist in his idea of freedom of scientific exploration, but as an orderly system of outlook of freedom, meaningfully it enriches d improves our understanding of the concept of freedom and therefore deserves our further study.