Negative Capability: by John Keats

Negative Capability:  

 Negative Capability is very important term which coined by very famous poet of Romantic Era, John Keats(1795-1821), he used it first time to write letter to his brother, George and Thomas. John Keats was the most influential literary figure of Romantic Era.  “Negative Capability”, it is  the willingness to embrace uncertainty, live with mystery, and make peace with ambiguity. Life is short lived it is ephemeral there is no specific determination what will tomorrow bring for us we do not know, to show the imperatives of life he has formulated the principles of life through this concept, therefore this concept has great importance in literary domain.

Negative capability describes the capacity of human beings to transcend and revise their contexts. The term has been used by poets and philosophers to describe the ability of the individual to perceive, think, and operate beyond any presupposition of a predetermined capacity of the human being. It further captures the rejection of the constraints of any context, and the ability to experience phenomena free from epistemological bounds, as well as to assert one's own will and individuality upon their activity. The term was first used by the Romantic poet John Keats to critique those who sought to categorize all experience and phenomena and turn them into a theory of knowledge. It has recently been appropriated by philosopher and social theorist Roberto Mangabeira Unger to comment on human nature and to explain how human beings innovate and resist within confining social contexts. The concept has also inspired psychoanalytic practices and twentieth-century art and literary criticism.

 This concept focuses the hidden quality of human being; human has the capacity to understand the unexpected problems of the life therefore any circumstance person should not lose the concentration he should think to overcome that obstacle by using the hidden capacity of human being.

·         (Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason……..By John Keats)