Kirby ferguson negative capability examples

The poet John Keats, writing to his brothers about the power of art, truth, and beauty,¹ experienced whilst walking with friends an epiphany regarding William Shakespeare's genius:

"[S]everal things dovetailed in my mind, & at once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in Literature and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously—I mean Negative Capability, that is when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason—Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half knowledge."

Negative Capability

On first glance, the term “negative capability” seems self-contradictory.

“Don’t just do something, stand there” (a phrase we use in crisis management)seems questionable at best. However cou