Study On Berlin's Political Thinking Of Liberalism

This paper aims to make a systemic study of Berlin's political thinking of liberalism. In the thinking history of contemporary liberalism, or in the broad sense of political philosophy, Isaiah·Berlin is a guide, and also is a rebel, a real thinker of"going against the stream"in the camp of western liberalism. His partition of the two sorts of concept of liberty not only clarified the concept of liberty, but also recalled the history of liberalism ,even the western theory of liberty; His reemphasizing of the individual right, his pleading of negative liberty, in the axis of discourse of liberalism between individual and state, changed the liberalistic thinking direction which emphasized the power of state over a half century, and procured the reversion of liberalism to classical liberalism; His rebuilding of liberalism on the base of value pluralism, promoted the thinking way of pluralism, has already become the common thinking frame of contemporary western political philosophy and moral philosophy, and is the start of contemporary political thinking; Based on the value pluralism, Berlin spurned the thinking route of seeking rational consensus in the traditional liberalism, and endowed tolerance with new connotation; The historicism and cultural pluralism contained in Berlin's value pluralism, became a powerful challenge to the mainstream universal political philosophy of liberalism, and initiated turning from modern liberalism to neo- liberalism.Berlin's political thinking of liberalism was not only a reflection of the political and moral actuality in the 20th century, but also was a response to the modern world"which plunged into a conflicting state among the various spirits, after eliminating the fanaticism of rationalism", a new scan and rethinking of liberalism in modern context. Berlin's liberalism is virtually a"counter-fundamental"liberalism, spurning the"identity", advocates and persists in the liberalism in the condition of abandoning the traditional faith in the west, such as fundamentalism and identity philosophy. Although Berlin's striving to seek the value pluralism for the liberalism was not very successful, the plural thinking fashion he pioneered for the liberalism, his"competitive liberalism", explored a possible way to the future for the liberalism. Only when liberalism thinks much of value pluralism, it can adapt the more and more plural world under the post-modern background. However, we should know that Berlin was the prolocutor of the value view of western liberalism in the time of cold war, and embodied the political trend of western political thinking and thinking characteristic of individualism; His view of liberty only represented the value tropism of western bourgeoisie, and had its localization of history and class; He used the negative liberty of liberalism to oppose the positive liberty of communism, implicating the attempt to suppress one"conception"with another"conception"; He regarded Marxism as a mechanical determinism of history, which is also needed to deliberate; Berlin's political thinking of liberalism itself also lacks the inherent consistency and tightness, and has its theoretical jam which is not easy to overcome.Currently, our innovation and opening have come into the key period, and some new problems began to emerge gradually. The conflict caused by the diversification of main interests, and the omen lacking moral and political consensus stands out increasingly nowadays. Thus, in the process of advancing vigorously the construction of socialist political civilization, on one way, we must try hard to construct the nuclear value system of socialism, broadening our accord on the base of respecting diversity, and consider the nuclear value system of socialism as the soul of socialistic system and the footstone of ideological edifice of socialism; On the other way, we should also have the courage to use the helpful fruits of human-being's political civilization for reference. We do not have to agree Berlin's ideological viewpoints, but we should not refuse the helpful elements in his thinking. It requires that we should stand on the side of the Marxist materialistic viewpoint of history, unscrambling critically Berlin'political thinking of liberalism, not only recognizing the essential and localization of his thinking, but also digging out some thinking resources useful to us. This should be the basic attitude we have when we study Berlin's political thinking of liberalism.