Abstract
Quixote is a caricature of a knight errant; steeped into his fictional heroes, he undertakes to revive a tradition long dead, and in the process leaves behind some unforgettable images of knightly virtue turned sour. This caricature, however, is not simply a ploy meant to arouse laughter, but also an occasion to revisit the emphasis on knowledge and good sense with which virtue has been aligned in the Socratic/Platonic tradition. The challenge Quixote represents concerns the relation between reasoning and the ability to “get it right” in practice; by sundering these apart, Cervantes forces a reconsideration of the unity of thought and action.
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Notes
- 1.
I follow the English translation of Don Quixote by Edith Grossman (New York: HarperCollins, 2003). References are given in the text by page number. References to Plato’s dialogues are given to the standard Stephanus pages. All Greek cited has been transliterated. Note that I have employed ē for eta and ō for omega.
- 2.
Plato, Meno, trans. G.M.A. Grube, in Complete Works, ed. J.M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997).
- 3.
See Heda Segvic, “No One Errs Willingly: The Meaning of Socratic Intellectualism,” in A Companion to Socrates, ed. Sara Ahbel-Rappe and Rachana Kamtekar (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007): 171-85.
- 4.
See the editor’s Introduction to Anthony J. Cascardi, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Cervantes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 1, where it is commented that the novel is “unjustly treated when reduced to a few scenes from Part 1.” See also Roberto González Echevarría, Love and the Law in Cervantes (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), pp. 112–13.
- 5.
On the importance of being able to offer an account for one’s beliefs, see Terence Irwin, Plato’s Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 21–3; hereafter abbreviated PE. On Cervantes’s challenge of the philosophers’ authority, see Diana de Armas Wilson, “‘Unreason’s Reason’: Cervantes at the Frontiers of Difference,” Philosophy and Literature 16, no. 1 (April 1992): 49–67 (49).
- 6.
Anthony J. Cascardi, “Two Kinds of Knowing in Plato, Cervantes, and Aristotle,” Philosophy and Literature 24, no. 2 (October 2000): 406–23 (410–11); hereafter abbreviated “TKK”. See also Anthony J. Cascardi, Cervantes, Literature, and the Discourse of Politics (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012), p. 21.
- 7.
Cervantes accentuates the hopelessness of the task by having the fictional author of the book, Cide Hamete Benengeli, address his character directly: “You on foot, you alone, you intrepid and of a noble mind, armed only with a sword, and not one of those with a dog on the blade, and with a shield not made of bright and shining steel, you stand waiting and anticipating the two most savage lions ever born in the African jungle. May your own deeds sing your praises, most valiant Manchegan” (p. 563).
- 8.
It may be objected that Quixote here appears to be more concerned with his reputation than with attaining genuine virtue. A concern with reputation and success, however, was not alien to the Greek conception of aretē; see Alexander Nehamas, Virtues of Authenticity: Essays on Plato and Socrates (Princeton University Press, 1998), pp. xxxi, 4, 37; hereafter abbreviated VA.
- 9.
The word used to denote “wisdom” here is phronēsis, “a very difficult word to translate”, as Aubert-Baillot notes, meaning “thought”, “intellectual perception”, “sense”, “prudence”, “practical wisdom.” See Sophie Aubert-Baillot, “De la Φρόνησιϛ à la prudentia,” Mnemosyne 68, no. 1 (January 2015): 68–90 (68).
- 10.
On the question of happiness vs. pleasure see Gregory Vlastos, Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 204–5.
- 11.
Plato, Apology, trans. G.M.A. Grube, in Complete Works, ed. J.M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997). See also Vlastos, p. 209.
- 12.
Cf. VA, p. 28: “The problem then seems to be this. Socrates’ ethical intellectualism makes him believe that once people acquire knowledge of virtue, they will be able to tell what the good thing to do is in all circumstances, and will in fact do it. They will therefore always act well and be happy. But the transition from knowledge to action seems highly doubtful.”
- 13.
Plato, Laches, trans. R.K. Sprague, in Complete Works, ed. J.M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997).
- 14.
Laches and Socrates retreated together at the battle of Delium, where the Athenians were defeated by the Boeotians.
- 15.
On the historical background to the dialogue, see Walter T. Schmid, On Manly Courage: A Study of Plato’s Laches (Southern Illinois University Press, 1992), pp. 1–24; hereafter abbreviated MC.
- 16.
I therefore follow in my reading of the Laches an interpretive strategy proposed by Martha Nussbaum in a paper on Plato’s Symposium: “Plato believes it important to see a theory as growing out of, and, in turn, inspiring, particular choices and ways of living. He wants to show us certain connections between belief and behavior, and also how concrete experiences of a certain sort could tell for or against holding a theory.” Martha Nussbaum, “The Speech of Alcibiades: A Reading of Plato’s Symposium,” Philosophy and Literature 3, no. 2 (Fall 1979): 131–72 (138). See also George Kimball Plochman’s Foreward to MC: “It is an assumption, but a sound one, that Plato knew thoroughly the eventual defeats of the two generals [...] as well as their shortcomings that brought these about, causes resting upon their severally inadequate conceptions of the main virtue upon which success in war must depend. So Plato could put into their mouths intimations of this shortsightedness as well as anticipations of the men’s consequent downfall, hints whose true significance only readers of the dialogue, not the generals portrayed, could fully assess” (p. xii).
- 17.
See, for example, Protagoras 345c–e, where Socrates defends his notorious “no one errs willingly” thesis.
- 18.
See also MC, p. 101: “Possibly [Socrates] does not intend simply to refute this conception but to probe it, understand it better, discover its strengths and weaknesses.”
- 19.
Or, in an alternative translation, the “knowledge of what is to be dreaded and dared”; see MC, p. 132.
- 20.
See MC, p. 9.
- 21.
See W. Thomas Schmid, “The Socratic Conception of Courage,” History of Philosophy Quarterly 2, no. 2 (1985): 113–29 (113–17).
- 22.
See Apology 29a–b: “To fear death, gentlemen, is no other than to think oneself wise when one is not, to think one knows what one does not know. No one knows whether death may not be the greatest of all blessings for a man, yet men fear it as if they knew that it is the greatest of all evils.”
- 23.
Plato, Phaedo, trans. G.M.A. Grube, in Complete Works, ed. J.M. Cooper (Indianapolis, Hackett, 1997).
- 24.
In this sense he is like Plato’s ideal statesman who, as Cascardi puts it, “combines knowledge by measurement and number with practical wisdom, or a sense of ‘what to do when’.” “The ideal statesman recognizes the differences between the two epistēmēs and knows when to call upon each one” (“TKK”, p. 409).
- 25.
See Sarah Kofman, Socrates: Fictions of a Philosopher, trans. Catherine Porter (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998), pp. 16–18.
- 26.
See Kofman, p. 20.
- 27.
See the comparison Kofman draws between Socrates and his disciple Aristodemus: “The master’s bizarre behaviour is disconcerting for his disciple, who seems unaware that Socrates is master of his own body as well as of opposing possibilities; he has not pledged himself either to sobriety or to self-mortification, and he is not committed to limiting his pleasures, for he has an astonishing capacity to retain his full strength, consciousness and lucidity in the midst of bodily excesses” (Kofman, p. 18).
- 28.
“TKK”, p. 406; see also the analysis in Giselle von der Walde, “Mimesis En El Quijote: Una Lectura Platónica de Su Práctica Imitativa (A Propósito de I, Caps. 49–50),” Ideas y Valores 55, no. 130 (April 2006): 23–37.
- 29.
On the theme of love in Don Quixote see González Echevarría, pp. 1–16.
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Roupa, V. (2021). Foolhardy Yet Courageous: Is There Such a Thing as Quixotic Virtue?. In: Hagberg, G.L. (eds) Fictional Worlds and the Moral Imagination. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55049-3_2
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