Editing Negative capability (section)

==Reception==
===Roberto Mangabeira Unger, 2004===
In 2004, Brazilian philosopher [[Roberto Mangabeira Unger]] appropriated Keats' term in order to explain resistance to rigid social divisions and hierarchies where negative capability was the denial of whatever delivered over to a fixed scheme of division and hierarchy and to an enforced choice between routine and rebellion. Negative capability could empower against social and institutional constraints, and loosen the bonds entrapping people in a certain social station.<ref name="Unger">{{Cite book |last=Unger |first=Roberto |title=False Necessity: Anti-Necessitarian Social Theory in the Service of Radical Democracy, Revised Edition |publisher=Verso |year=2004 |isbn=978-1-85984-331-4 |location=London}}</ref>{{rp|279–280, 632}}

Unger claimed an example of negative capability could be seen in industrial innovation, when modern industrialist could not just become more efficient with surplus extraction based on pre-existing work roles, but needed to invent new styles of flexible labor, expertise, and capital management, by inventing new restraints upon labor, such as length of the work day and division of tasks. Unger claimed industrialists and managers who were able to break old forms of organizational arrangements exercised negative capability.<ref name="Unger"/>{{rp|299–301}}

Negative capability is a key component in Unger's theory of [[false necessity]] and [[formative context]]. The theory of false necessity claims that social worlds are the artifact of human endeavors. In order to explain how people move from one formative context to another without the conventional social theory constraints of historical necessity (e.g. feudalism to capitalism), and to do so while remaining true to the key insight of individual human empowerment and [[anti-necessitarian social thought]], Unger recognized an infinite number of ways of resisting social and institutional constraints, which could lead to an infinite number of outcomes. This variety of forms of resistance and [[empowered democracy|empowerment]] (i.e. negative capability) would make change possible.<ref name="Unger"/>{{rp|35–36, 164, 169, 278–80, 299–301}}

According to Unger negative capability addresses the problem of [[agency (sociology)|agency]] in relation to [[social structure|structure]] and unlike other theories of [[structure and agency]], negative capability would not reduce the individual to a simple actor possessing only the dual capacity of compliance or rebellion.<ref name="Unger"/>{{rp|282}}

===Wilfred Bion===
The twentieth-century British psychoanalyst [[Wilfred Bion]] elaborated on Keats's term to illustrate an attitude of openness of mind which he considered of central importance, not only in the psychoanalytic session, but in life itself.<ref>Joan and Neville Symington, ''The Clinical Thinking of Wilfrid Bion'' (1996) p. 169</ref> For Bion, negative capability was the ability to tolerate the pain and confusion of not knowing, rather than imposing ready-made or omnipotent certainties upon an ambiguous situation or emotional challenge.<ref>Meg Harris Williams, ''The Aesthetic Development'' (2009)</ref> His idea has been taken up more widely in the British Independent School,<ref>Patrick Casement, ''Further Learning from the Patient'' (London 1990) p. 10 and p. 13-4</ref> as well as elsewhere in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.psychoanalysisdownunder.com.au/issues/8/papers/106 |title=Psychoanalysis Downunder |access-date=2 May 2018 |archive-date=4 March 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190304080230/http://psychoanalysisdownunder.com.au/issues/8/papers/106 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

===Dimitris Lyacos===
Greek author [[Dimitris Lyacos]] has considered people living "in the margins" as possessing the negative capability that permits them to cross boundaries and, by accepting "the burden of the mystery", explore uncertainty and the flux of life against western norms and structures. In a 2018 interview in Berfrois Magazine Lyacos noted: "We carry with us a backpack of ideas, theories, insecurities and the detailed scenarios we project onto the future. Unlike us, outcasts, fugitives and people in the margins are the ones possessing the negative capability, the power to bear the "burden of the mystery"; immigrants cross seas that might engulf them. Their fear is overcome not only by the hope of a better life but also by their acceptance of those darker alleys, where time and space are created at the moment in which they are experienced."<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.berfrois.com/2018/11/berfrois-interviews-dimitris-lyacos/|title=Berfrois Interviews Dimitris Lyacos|date=16 November 2018}}</ref>

===Zen===
The notion of negative capability has been associated with [[Zen philosophy]].  Keats' man of negative capability had qualities that enabled him to "lose his self-identity, his 'imaginative identification' with and submission to things, and his power to achieve a unity with life". The Zen concept of [[satori]] is the outcome of passivity and receptivity, culminating in "sudden insight into the character of the real".  Satori is reached without deliberate striving. The antecedent stages to satori: quest, search, ripening and explosion. The "quest" stage is accompanied by a strong feeling of uneasiness, resembling the capacity to practice negative capability while the mind is in a state of "uncertainties, mysteries and doubts". In the explosive stage (akin to Keats' 'chief intensity'), a man of negative capability effects a "fellowship with essence".<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Benton|first=R. P.|date=1966|title=Keats and Zen|journal=Philosophy East and West |volume=16 |issue=1/2 |pages=33–47|doi=10.2307/1397137|jstor=1397137}}</ref>
===Mindfulness===
When humans are presented with external stress, the [[autonomic nervous system]] provides them with a '[[Fight-or-flight response|fight or flight]]' response, a binary choice. Fight or flight has been called positive capability,{{according to whom|date=May 2024}}. Teachers of [[mindfulness]] stress the importance of cultivating negative capability in order to overcome and provide an alternative to our routine reactions to stress.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Negative capability – why it is more positive than you might think -|url=https://www.melbournemindfulnessfoundation.com/blog/negative-capability-why-it-is-more-positive-than-you-might-think|access-date=19 November 2020|language=en-US}}</ref> They point out that mindfulness teaches tolerance of uncertainty, and enriches decision making. It may not be productive to discuss whether negative or positive capability is more important, as they are analogous to the poles of a battery: a battery is only a battery if it has both positive and negative terminals.