Talk:Negative capability

Dilkes
Can anyone identify which of the three possible Dilkes is referred to in the quotation? -- Karada 15:19, 29 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Following myself up: I think it was probably Charles Wentworth Dilke (Dilke the Elder), based on http://www.john-keats.com/biografie/chapter_iv.htm, which refers to Dilke being 29 sometime in or after 1817, which fits the elder Dilke's dates. No mention of Keats in our Dilke article, though. -- Karada 15:23, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Pullman reference
I'd like to take out the "Even" from "Even Philip Pullman" in order to render it more impartial. The word seems unnecessary as a transition and introduces tones to the sentence that may not have been intended. I'll change it if there are no objections. Hellomannyb (talk) 13:10, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Then again, Pullman's work has been characterized as allied to atheism and what might briefly be described as rationalism, which is - possibly? - the very antithesis of what Keats was trying to get at. But I don't know enough about Keats or Pullman, so I won't add anything to the article. Just an observation. 90.205.92.32 (talk) 01:34, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't claim to know what message Pullman intends to convey in these novels, but what I can say for having read the books is that there is a reference to Keats' letter, and the concept of negative capability is briefly explained by characters, I think. In my opinion, this particular reference is not that closely linked to religious issues, even though the novels are. I'd say that what Pullman intends is to praise the power of imagination, and the open-mindedness of childhood, something like that. This is roughly what Keats meant, right ? Ze gobou (talk) 20:22, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Pullman does quote the letter but this means very little. It remains to be explained/shown that his thought has been influenced by Keats's romanticism, and specifically the rejection here of instrumental reason. This is not a question of religion but of whether reason can obtain truth, or as Keats expresses, that we ought to abandon the primacy of reason and embrace the aesthetic. Archivingcontext (talk) 04:58, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Missing primary source
Wikisource does not yet have a copy of the 28 December 1817 letter this article describes as first setting forth this concept. I've tried some searching but have yet to find it anywhere online. If anyone has access to a book containing it, please upload a copy of the letter and add a link to it to this article. Thanks! Postdlf (talk) 18:15, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Clarification needed for unexplained jump from 'negative' to 'positive
I added a clarification tag (re the above) in the article because it does not make sense, currently. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:21, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

Negative capability as a social theory
Negative capability is more fully articulated as a social theory by Roberto Unger in his work on false necessity. It differs slightly from Keats in that he uses it to describe the individual's challenge to an existing social order and the capacity to collapse the distance between a context-preserving routine and a context-transforming challenge. In this way it is less about uncertainty and more about a state of empowering resistance, albeit not necessarily within a stable institutional space.

I am prepared to add Unger's use of negative capability to this entry, but not sure how to integrate it to what is already here. On the one hand it is much more developed than anything Keats produced, but also done so in a different context. In this manner, relegating Keats to background section of the entry might not work (nor would it really do justice to the legacy of poetry and English lit--although this part of the entry needs to be developed more). So, any suggestions/ideas on how to integrate? Or should we create two separate entries, e.g. "Negative capacity (poetry)" and "Negative capacity (philosophy/social theory)"? Archivingcontext (talk) 03:21, 24 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Did Unger expressly tie his concept to Keats'? Or is it just shared terminology?  Either way, it sounds like it would probably be better to handle it separately, and link it here with a "see also" or a hatnote disambiguator.  postdlf (talk) 03:32, 24 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Unger makes no mention of Keats, which is why it may be hard to connect these two thinkers with a history of ideas. Having said that, it should be noted that the influence of the romantics on Unger is unmistakeable and is all over his work, even if not directly expressed in his writing about negative capability. Archivingcontext (talk) 04:29, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

Lack of citations and use of the term "theory"
A large portion of this article made claims without citations raising questions of verifiability and appeared to be original research. I took the liberty of deleting these sections, but do welcome others to provide the necessary citations if they are available.

I also removed all the uses of the term "theory" in this article, as it is not only not a theory by the definition given on the wikipedia paged previously linked, but also, the article itself pointed out that Keats never developed it as a theory. It seemed contradictory to continue calling it a theory. Concept seems a better fit. Archivingcontext (talk) 12:23, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

Proposed revision of article
The more I look into Keats and his use of negative capability the more problems I see with this article.
 * 1) Foremost, the concept is not really explained, nor is the passage in the letter in which it was produced. I have tried to fix that by clarifying the opening paragraph but it needs more work.
 * 2) The graphs on the influence and reception of negative capacity are misleading at best, but more often, just plain wrong.
 * 3) Dewey does not cite this idea as influencing his ideas, only reserves a short discussion of it in reference to the limitations of instrumental reason.
 * 4) The quote by Dewey is completely out of context, and was not made in reference to this passage of the Keats letter.
 * 5) The Kestenbaum page number contains nothing on the said subject.
 * 6) The reference to Nathan Scott is misleading as the book is not about Keats, only borrowing the idea of aesthetics over reason to critique modern poetry
 * 7) Bate did take up negative capability in that biography, but it was a biography of Keats so cannot really be counted as influence.
 * 8) On Pullman, see the short discussion in talk above--I don't think Pullman deserves a mention in the article.

Unless someone can address these problems I am proposing a complete revision of this article. I propose to make it a general article about the concept of negative capability with an emphasis on Roberto Unger's fully developed theory of negative capability. In this way, Keats would get relegated to a background section. Archivingcontext (talk) 05:18, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

negative capability and direction of current flow
regarding this diff:

i'm sorry to take out your qualification involving the electron theory of current flow, but i think it's important not to qualify the statement here. the sentence in question is about why keats might have chosen the phrase, it's only hypothetical anyway, what seems to matter is how keats understood current flow, not how people do now, and at the time, current was universally understood to flow from positive to negative. there're wikilinks to both negative pole and to electric current right there, so anyone will be able to find the full story who wants it. also, and this is the main thing, it's still not actually wrong to say that current flows from the positive pole to the negative pole. it's true that electrons flow the other way, but the direction of conventional current flow is considered to be from positive to negative; it's difficult and yet irrelevant even for most purposes of engineers to determine the actual direction that electrons are moving in a circuit, it just doesn't seem important enough to me to break up that early sentence in this article. &mdash; alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 14:50, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

The definition of the phrase in the previous version seems worthy of inclusion for me
I notice that the definition of the phrase negative capability in the current version of the article has changed quite significantly from the version a few months back. The previous version included the explicit description that negative capability referred to the capability of the human mind to remain in a state of uncertainty without the urgency to resolve every mystery through the means of knowledge. Admitting that I'm no expert in the subject myself, I interpret Keat's original quote to be fairly consistent with the definition given in the previous article. Perhaps subsequent authors have expanded upon this idea to give the phrase a much wider application, I believe the definition of the phrase in the previous edition to be worthy of inclusion in the article. 130.216.217.113 (talk) 04:30, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
 * It does not make sense to resolve something through the means of knowledge. The previous definition did not make sense grammatically, conceptually, or philosophically. On what Keats was up to, please see the Wigod and Goellnicht references in the article. On what Keats was responding to, see Kant on the faculty of the understanding. Subsequent thinkers have not expanded the idea, but rather borrowed it to employ in other contexts. The challenge for this article then, is to capture both and all these meanings and developments. The intro thus needs to give a general description of the meaning of the phrase, which I think it does. It would be great if someone wanted to expand the Keats section of this article. However, I am not sure there is a whole lot to say on the matter, as Keats only used the term once and when doing so did not develop it into a full concept/theory. Archivingcontext (talk) 07:45, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Page focus
Recent changes to this page have been made to focus solely on Keats. These changes have been made on the underlying basis that "negative capability" is something that can only be associated to Keats and his use of it. User 76.19.112.89 has claimed that other associations to the term apart from Keats are a separate topic and not worthy of inclusion in this article.

I object to this position and the changes that have been made to reflect it on the following grounds. Wikipedia articles are meant to propound the extent of knowledge about a given subject, not provide a limited understanding of the said subject with biases towards a particular viewpoint or dataset. Thus, in writing and editing articles, we must ask, what do we know about this subject and how to communicate it to the world at large? How can we fully convey the breadth of human knowledge about the said subject? In our case, the subject of "negative capability" is not one that belongs solely to Keats and his use of it, but has been employed and developed by others, whose contributions ought to be discussed here--indeed, we have an obligation to discuss them here. While Keats may have provided the English speaking world with the first reference to the term "negative capability," he does not own the term any more than Husserl owns the term phenomenology. I see no good justification that an article about negative capability should be devoted solely to Keats and his use of it, especially when others have had a lot more to say about it than Keats did.

For those who wish to emphasize Keats and his ideas, my suggestion is to do so on the Keats main page. Archivingcontext (talk) 01:18, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

What is it?
Even after reading the entire lede, I have no idea not only what the current first sentence means, but only a smattering idea of what the second one means. I do, however, easily understand having "the capacity to live with uncertainty, mystery, and doubt, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason". AND this does not have to mean rejecting ALL fact and reason, just rejecting the grasping for facts and reasons where none can be found. Some people are INcapable of living with continued uncertainty and must have every issue resolved for them. I am referring to this current lede 2 sentences: --JimWae (talk) 08:03, 24 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Negative capability is the ability to perceive and to think more than any presupposition of human nature allows.[vague] It describes the capacity of human beings to reject the totalizing constraints of a closed context, and to both experience phenomenon free from any epistemological bounds as well as to assert their own will and individuality upon their activity.


 * I tried to address your concern by further clarifying the lede. I do think it is clear and succinct in capturing the meaning of the term as it is used by all the thinkers cited in the article. Refer to the discussion in the talk pages above about what Keats and others are reacting to in employing this term. Also, it may help to keep in mind that human nature is an idea that constrains the capability of human being, and negative capability is the transcendence of any concept of human nature dreamed up by the natural philosophers. Archivingcontext (talk) 13:02, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

Changes made to the revised lede on March 25 by JimWae are as follows:

''Negative capability is the state of creative independence that allows one to transcend intellectual and social constraints. It applies to the capacity of human beings to live with uncertainty and reject the drive to arrive at a fixed conclusion even though important facts are unavailable. The term was first used by the Romantic poet John Keats to critique Samuel Coleridge and praise William Shakespeare.''

I am restoring the original edits for the following reasons (sentence by sentence): Archivingcontext (talk) 01:48, 25 March 2012 (UTC) I agree with the comment that this article is not clear. This manner of speech can be found in many discussions in philosophical circles but in this context it is inappropriate (though I would argue that being clear is a primary concern of any informative writing). Before it is said, I strongly object to referring to being clear as "dumbing down" the discussion; by all means, leave nothing out but please take the extra effort to be clear in your own mind and then express these thoughts well. It is difficult and time consuming to do so but I have always found that I learn the most when I try to teach something I think I know. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.83.248.217 (talk) 22:34, 22 April 2014 (UTC)
 * 1) NC is not about independence but rather opposition. It is a rejection of systems of knowledge/life. On what Keats was up to, please see the Wigod and Goellnicht references in the article. On what Keats was responding to, see Kant on the faculty of the understanding.
 * 2) NC is not a thing that can be applied, it is a concept to describe something. The next bit about living with uncertainty is too much a literal borrowing of Keats words without understanding what he was getting at. I don't know where you are getting the last part about fixed conclusions or the unavailability of "important" facts. You must look at the intellectual influences of Keats and what he was responding to in order to fully comprehend his meaning here. He was frustrated with the practices of the natural sciences to categorize the world in a way that made everything intelligible as a knowable fact. Although he did not take the sciences on directly, he thought that it should be kept out of poetry, and criticized some of his contemporary poets for failing to do so. Again, please read the secondary literature on Keats and his ideas.
 * 3) Both Wigod and Goellnicht discuss that Keats had more in mind than just Coleridge, and, as I briefly point out in the previous point, he was responding to an intellectual movement. This needs to be emphasized not specificized. Feel free to put a note citing W and G if you think it necessary.

Too much Unger?
Does the amount of airtime Roberto Unger receives in this article not somewhat inflate his relevance to the broader cultural use and understanding of the term? Ie., the 'Criticism' section focuses solely on Unger. Might the 'Unger' portion be substantially streamlined?—the example of industrial innovation and his 'theory of false necessity' seem particularly extraneous here and could be moved to RU's wiki page. The 'Criticism' section should either removed (with relevant, essential points kept beneath the Unger heading) or revised to include criticisms in addition to those leveled at RU, since he certainly holds no monopoly on the concept. Finally, might 'Agnosticism' be an appropriate topical link in the 'See also' section of Negative Capability? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.35.174.252 (talk) 21:16, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

Too much Zen
One essay? A whole large paragraph?? Seems like Buddhist preaching rather than truly relevant to Keats. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 106.133.161.88 (talk) 11:31, 20 January 2017 (UTC)