On Negative Capability

John Keats (1817) paraphrased by Stephen Alexander (2024)

 

 

I. 

 

In a letter written to his brothers George and Thomas, in December 1817 [1], the English Romantic poet Keats briefly mentions a concept of Negative Capability - an idea by which he privileges uncertainty, indecision, and the refusal to rush to judgement. 

 

The great writer, he says, is one who is happy to have his doubts and to consider the complexity of a question from multiple perspectives, rather than quickly make up his mind. One retains one's freedom and affirms one's liberalism - and one avoids the mark of Cain - by refusing to know for sure.

 

For to know decisively and with precision is to kill; it is not simply to exercise choice between ideas, but to cut all other possibilities dead in order to arrive at a single fixed position.

 

 

II. 

 

Obviously, Keats being Keats, for him negative capability was esentially tied to the pursuit of beauty, even if that resulted from - or resulted in - ambiguity and irrationalism. But the idea has since been appropriated and developed by other writers, including the Zen philosopher Byung-Chul Han, for example, who has written:  

"Negative potentiality is the ability to do nothing. The latter is, however, not identical with the inability to do something. It is not a negation of positive potential but a potential of its own. It enables spirit to engage in still, contemplative lingering, that is, deep attentiveness." [2]

 

As sympathetic to all this as I am, I would still like to stop procrastinating and finish writing that fucking Sex Pistols essay ...! [3]

 

 

Notes

 

[1] This letter - with explanatory notes - can be found on the George Mason University website: click here.

 

[2] Byung Chul-Han, Non-things, trans. Daniel Steuer (Polity Press, 2022), p. 82. 

 

[3] See the post entitled 'Procrastination' (14 June 2024): click here. This post is written in response to the comment left by Simon Solomon.