"negative capability" meaning in English

{
  "etymology_text": "Coined by John Keats in an 1817 letter.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "negative capabilities",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "~"
      },
      "expansion": "negative capability (countable and uncountable, plural negative capabilities)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with 1 entry",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with entries",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2010, Jeff Mann, Binding the God: Ursine Essays from the Mountain South, →ISBN, page 167:",
          "text": "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).",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2011, Sidner Larson, Captured in the Middle, →ISBN, page 147:",
          "text": "It also, however, contains the potential for negative capability that might help transform genocide into something generative.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2011, Daniel Markovits, A Modern Legal Ethics: Adversary Advocacy in a Democratic Age, →ISBN:",
          "text": "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.",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "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."
      ],
      "id": "en-negative_capability-en-noun-UKQSEAOn",
      "links": [
        [
          "capacity",
          "capacity"
        ],
        [
          "artist",
          "artist"
        ],
        [
          "pursue",
          "pursue"
        ],
        [
          "ideal",
          "ideal"
        ],
        [
          "beauty",
          "beauty"
        ],
        [
          "perfection",
          "perfection"
        ],
        [
          "sublimity",
          "sublimity"
        ],
        [
          "intellectual",
          "intellectual"
        ],
        [
          "confusion",
          "confusion"
        ],
        [
          "uncertainty",
          "uncertainty"
        ]
      ],
      "tags": [
        "countable",
        "uncountable"
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "John Keats"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "negative capability"
}

{
  "etymology_text": "Coined by John Keats in an 1817 letter.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "negative capabilities",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "~"
      },
      "expansion": "negative capability (countable and uncountable, plural negative capabilities)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English uncountable nouns",
        "Pages with 1 entry",
        "Pages with entries"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2010, Jeff Mann, Binding the God: Ursine Essays from the Mountain South, →ISBN, page 167:",
          "text": "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).",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2011, Sidner Larson, Captured in the Middle, →ISBN, page 147:",
          "text": "It also, however, contains the potential for negative capability that might help transform genocide into something generative.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2011, Daniel Markovits, A Modern Legal Ethics: Adversary Advocacy in a Democratic Age, →ISBN:",
          "text": "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.",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "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."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "capacity",
          "capacity"
        ],
        [
          "artist",
          "artist"
        ],
        [
          "pursue",
          "pursue"
        ],
        [
          "ideal",
          "ideal"
        ],
        [
          "beauty",
          "beauty"
        ],
        [
          "perfection",
          "perfection"
        ],
        [
          "sublimity",
          "sublimity"
        ],
        [
          "intellectual",
          "intellectual"
        ],
        [
          "confusion",
          "confusion"
        ],
        [
          "uncertainty",
          "uncertainty"
        ]
      ],
      "tags": [
        "countable",
        "uncountable"
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "John Keats"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "negative capability"
}