Keats' phrase for the capacity to remain in uncertainty without reaching irritably after fact and reason — which the pair, at the close of dialogue 65, turn on themselves. It names the form of a conversation that keeps a question open after finding a pattern in it, and Cameron makes it the answer to what the show is for. New to it — start at the end of dialogue 65.
Across the dialogues
Closes the session as its self-description — Keats'' formula is turned from a topic the pair discussed into the name for what the dialogue itself is doing
The term is retrieved as the session's frame at the moment the session ends, which turns two hours of argument into an instance of the thing named.
"that's what negative capability is, which is where we started from. The passage on Keats."
The formula recited and immediately applied — "that's what we've come to" makes it a description of their position rather than a definition offered.
"When a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason, that's what we've come to. Negative capability."
The strongest claim either man makes for the series — the content is dispensable and the demonstration is the point.
"Just the exchange as an example of negative capability and what it's capable of."
Connections
Keats' phrase, recited by Bob from the letter.
The phrase from his letters that the pair adopt as a self-description.