Emergent Philosophy

So we see a philosophy emerging from John Keats, who is both a romantic idealist, and a skeptical realist. He denounced philosophical systems of living; yet his very denunciation of systematic interpretation was, in fact, a system of sorts. Negative capability and the inherent acceptance therein offer Keats and his readers a mode of understanding, and even a way of living.

THOU still unravish'd bride of quietness

Keats is a man comfortable working within paradoxes: The Ode on a Grecian Urn offers no concrete conclusion; the bride in this famous line above remains forever unravished and we’ve consummated nothing at the poem’s end. This is Keats as "pragmatic dreamer" – and critics argue it’s because of these uncertainties, doubts, ambiguities, and contradictions that Keats and Shakespeare are so attractive, and timeless. (Cambridge 252)

Keats may have inadvertently turned his lack of doctrine into a doctrine. Keats sees the poet and the dreamer as distinct: illusions of isolated perfection are for dreamers, not poets.

Thou, silent form! dost tease us out of thought

As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!

A Dreamer would prefer to seek out, and perhaps forever remain, in a romantic pastoral scene; but it is the job and duty of the poet to contrast this transcendent escape from reality with the even more vivid, real human reality – a reality where real truth lies for the pragmatic romantic Keats.