To say that death is a perspective might at first sound bizarre. The fear of death must be among the most powerful fears humans experience during their life (think about the irony for a second).
Whether that fear is rational or not, it’s something we’ll need to talk about. We also need to ponder on what we mean by “fear of death”. Do we refer to our death or others’? Do we refer to death or dying?
All these are valid questions – albeit, questions most people bypass as too inconvenient. These, too, are parts of the “death is a perspective” thesis. But there’s much more to it.
Death is a perspective: it depends on the observer(more…)
In today’s post I will talk about Negative Capability. In particular, I’ll try to answer the question, What is negative capability? There’s a reason I’ve used bold font. There’s also a reason I said that I’ll try to answer the question.
Honestly, few things in a literary context have troubled me more than negative capability. Can I give you a definition? Sure. That’s very easy. Let’s take the one offered by John Keats himself, who coined the term.
[S]everal things dovetailed in my mind, & at once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in Literature & 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 & 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.
The Letters of John Keats, ed. H E Rollins. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958.
Negative capability is about the search for aesthetic, rather than philosophical meaning.
Giving a simple definition is relatively easy. Understanding the repercussions, is an entirely different story. Let’s try to unpack this.
