Thursday, December 14, 2006

Currently reading Explaining Hitler by Ron Rosenbaum. He says that he started off to explain Hitler but then, given the uncertainties, found it useful also to look at people's 'explaining' as a reflection of themselves. As the author says,

I became fascinated with this phenomenon, when it came to Hitler, of "negative capability" (the quality first defined by John Keats as the ability to tolerate uncertainty without "irritable reaching" for certainty).

The book is wonderful certainly. Rosenbaum notes his "preference for Empsonian ambiguity;" definition anyone?

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