To be a proactive, efficient and productive student who is trained and able to act decidedly with skills and competences, seems to be the highest value and the gold standard of what higher education is aiming at. Thomas Huxley famous aphorism: “Make up your mind to act decidedly and take the consequences. No good is ever done in this world by hesitation" (Huxley & Huxley, 2011, p.51), leaves no room for any form of tarrying or hesitation. Quite the opposite, every form of inertia, hesitation, and slowing down is regarded as an impediment to progress and efficiency (Brunstad & Oliverio, 2019).  The problem though might be, as Albert Einstein formulated it, that we can’t solve a problem with the ways of thinking that created it (Einstein, 1931). It starts to deem that our existing educational system, with its understanding of knowing and thinking, is a larger part of the contemporary global crisis we are facing, then a solution. We therefore need to reassess our educational system and its pedagogical, epistemological and ontological presuppositions.

 Huxley’s aphorism might consequently be put to shame. A more passive and critical reflective mode of being, can be more valuable for the time ahead than first thought of. Not more of the same, but less. To slow down, to make a halt in order to revisit conventional practice and old thinking, can help students to better navigate and find new and more sustainable alternative sources of insight and wisdom. Tarrying or the art of hesitation can enable a form of attention or reflection that can unveil both the depth and the complexity of being (Brunstad & Oliverio, 2019) for the purpose of finding sager and better ways of doing.

 This paper will scrutinize the value of a wise passivity that “enables things to come about less by what is done than by what is not done, that opens up possibilities where activity closes it down” (McGilchrist, 2012, p. 174, emphasis in original). A further elaboration upon this topic will take what John Keats calls ‘negative capability’ as its starting point. “Negative capability” characterizes a “man of achievement” who “is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason” (Keats, 1970, p.43). 

In a world marked by a high degree of uncertainty and doubts, Keats calls for an ability to tolerate ambiguity and complexity without filling the vacuum of uncertainty and not-knowing with “fact and reason”, and accordingly also renounce using old and well-known solutions. By refraining from knowing and doing, by not using one’s “positive capability”, an inner and outer space is left open and enables an active and attentive receptivity that can help students to find new and more relevant perspectives and possibilities. The art of hesitation developed in line with Keats “negative capability”, maintain an inner space needed for a hopeful and positive engagement with unknown and uncertain future (Bülow & Simpson, 2022, p.45).

I want to use literature review understood as a comprehensive summary of previous research on "negative capability"/ the art of hesitation/ tarrying found in scholarly articles, books, and other sources relevant to this particular area of research.

The aim of this papaer is pose a critical examination of higher educaiton and its focus on a proactive, efficient and productive way of acting, being and studying. The next step is to outline and alternative way of living and studying with a focus on the value of a wise passivity that enables things to come about less by what is done than by what is not done, that opens up possibilities where activity closes it down.

Brunstad, P.O. & Oliverio, S. (2019). “Cunctando restituit rem”: Teaching, Grown-Up-Ness and the Impulse Society. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 38 (5), 569-575. Bülow, C.v. & Simpson, P. (2022). Negative Capability in Leadership Practice. Implications for Working in Uncertainty. Palgrave Macmillan. Einstein, A. (1931). Living Philosophies. AMS Press. Huxley, T. H. & Huxley H. A. (2011). Aphorisms and Reflections from the works of T. H. Huxley. The Project Gutenberg eBook. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/35584/pg35584-images.html Keats, J., in R. Gittings, (ed.). (1970). Letters of John Keats. Oxford University Press. McGilchrist, I. (2012). The Master and his Emissary. The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World. Yale University Press.