Meaning of negative capability | Babel Free

Definitions

The capacity of artists to pursue ideals of beauty, perfection and sublimity even when it leads them into intellectual confusion and uncertainty, as opposed to a preference for philosophical certainty over artistic beauty.

countable, uncountable

Examples

“His poetry helps me understand⟳ passion and mortality; his musings on negative capability help⟳ me understand⟳ how I can love⟳ and hate⟳ home at the same time. Negative capability, said Keats in an 1817 letter, “is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact & reason⟳" (1818).”

“It also, however, contains the potential for negative capability that might help⟳ transform⟳ genocide into something generative.”

“The centerpiece of the chapter is an effort to redeem the promise⟳ that I have⟳ earlier attributed to the lawyerly virtues—in particular to fidelity and its attendant negative capability—by setting these virtues in a political context.”

CEFR level