Negative capability
In 1817, the poet John Keats wrote a letter to his brothers to share this exciting realization. “At once it struck me,” Keats wrote, “what quality went to form a Man of Achievement … Negative Capability.” Keats explains that “Negative Capability” is “when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching... See more
Live the Questions: Rilke on Embracing Uncertainty and Doubt as a Stabilizing Force
Maria Popovathemarginalian.org
Negative capability (Keats, 1899) was coined by the Romantic poet John Keats in a 1817 letter penned over 200 years ago wherein it was described as a desired state of consciousness in which someone "is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after facts and reason"