Negative Capability Is A Profound Therapy

RICHARD FOREMAN

Playwright & Director; Founder, The Ontological-Hysteric Theater

Mistakes, errors, false starts ― accept them all. The basis of creativity.

My reference point (as a playwright, not a scientist) was Keat's notion of negative capability (from his letters). Being able to exist with lucidity and calm amidst uncertainty, mystery and doubt, without "irritable (and always premature) reaching out" after fact and reason.

This toolkit notion of negative capability is a profound therapy for all manner of ills ― intellectual, psychological, spiritual and political. I reflect it (amplify it) with Emerson's notion that "Art (any intellectual activity?) is (best thought of as but) the path of the creator to his work."