PTI: Philosophy, Poetry, and Politics in Don Quixote

Often considered the first novel, Cervantes’ Don Quixote is a book about books. Its hero attempts a grand project of world-wide conquest, empire, and reform inspired, in part, by a series of books. Don Quixote’s project is a failure, but the novel explores how texts – poetic, philosophical, revealed – can radically affect people’s opinions about the world and themselves. Don Quixote is a case study of the human psyche in action, and this lecture will focus on Cervantes’ accounts of three underlying human needs: for glory, eros, and the noble (to kalon).

Prof. Henry Higuera, an expert on Don Quixote, will reveal Cervantes’ lessons from the layers of complexity and indirection that characterize his book. Author of Eros and Empire: The Problem of Christian Politics in Don Quixote (Rowman & Littlefield, 1995), Dr. Higuera taught at St. John’s College in Annapolis from 1982-2018. From 1990-1997 he was a member of the National Council for the Humanities, the presidentially appointed advisory board for the National Endowment for the Humanities.