Passages from Don Quijote have been taken from the edition by Martín de Riquer; translations are mine.

Previous studies of enchantment in Don Quijote have not related it to theories of perception or knowledge nor attempted to interpret enchantment in broad, figurative terms as we do, by regarding it as a metaphor for epistemological realism. Actually, they have tended to be descriptions instead of interpretations. If Ortega y Gasset's brief observations on windmills had touched on the subject of enchantment instead of being confined to illusion, they would be an exception in this regard. He sees Don Quijote's «abnormality» to be the normal, human, cultural tendency to assign a sense to things regardless of their materiality (pp. 143-44). Castro does not explore the enchantment motif separately or analyze it in any detail. When he does refer to it, he sees it as a means Cervantes used to introduce the theme of the fallibility of the senses and the possibility of appearances being interpreted differently by different individuals, i.e., as supporting the ambiguous and relativistic conception of truth that he considers fundamental to the novel as a whole (pp. 83, 390). Spitzer, like Castro, sees enchantment as the condition for Don Quijote's seeing things differently from others and, hence, as expressing the «perspectivism» advanced by Castro. He also sees Don Quijote's tendency to substitute fantasies for a monotonous and limited reality as expressing a healthy and heroic, although unrealistic, rebellion against the established order (pp. 306, 292-93). Navarro González sees the concept of «evil enchanters» as functioning to allow quixotic belief to be sustained (p. 278). Likewise, Predmore characterizes enchantment in the Quijote as being the principle by which Don Quijote explains to himself the disturbing fact that people and things seem so often to be what they really are; hence, it is a means of maintaining his illusions and of explaining that for which he has no explanation (pp. 67-68, 77). Avalle-Arce, on the contrary, sees enchantment as an intrusion that threatens Don Quijote's willfully created ideal vision of the world (p. 374). El Saffar regards enchantment as the means Don Quijote uses to protect what she terms his sanity as he becomes increasingly confused at his inability to rely on sense-perception and reason to explain the strange incidents that befall him (p. 111). Ihrie distinguishes between enchantment in Part I, where it expresses Don Quijote's assurance that his mistaken sense perceptions are accurate, and Part II, where they are the means whereby he discounts accurate sense perceptions as being mistaken (pp. 59-60). Like Navarro-González and Predmore, Mancing considers enchantment in the Quijote to be a way for Don Quijote to rationalize his defeats and thus to sustain his chivalric vision (p. 46). Williamson recognizes that Don Quijote's madness does not involve a crude distortion of visual perception and sees his distortions (presumably what Don Quijote would attribute to enchantment) as «a kind of perverse misreading of everyday situations caused by a desire to make them fit his chivalric obsession». Believing things to be superior to their actual appearances, Don Quijote seeks «to identify the romance potential concealed within the humdrum reality he is forced to live in so as to draw it out for others to see» (pp. 96-97). Eisenberg notes that because of Don Quijote's insistence that enchantment changes appearances, it is impossible to convince him that he is in error, just as it is impossible to determine whether what one sees is reality or the product of enchanters' distortions (pp. 171, 173).

Francisco Márquez-Villanueva, «La locura emblemática en la segunda parte del Quijote», Cervantes and the Renaissance. Ed. Michael D. McGaha (Easton, Pennsylvania: Juan de la Cuesta, 1980), p. 106.

See Kristeller, Studies, Chapter 4, «The Scholastic Background of Marsilio Ficino» (pp. 35-97). Also, in Renaissance Thought Kristeller goes to considerable lengths to draw attention to modern scholarship's fallacy of not recognizing the presence of a flourishing tradition of Aristotelianism throughout the Renaissance period (pp. 33-47, 50-57, 61, 114-16), pointing out that Neoplatonism itself was a synthesis of Platonism, Aristotelianism, and stoicism (p. 51). He writes, «We have learned through recent studies that the chief progress made during the latter fourteenth century in the fields of logic and natural philosophy was due to the Aristotelian, and more specifically, to the Occamist school at Paris and Oxford. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, university instruction in the philosophical disciplines continued everywhere to be based on the works of Aristotle; consequently, most professional teachers of philosophy followed the Aristotelian tradition, used its terminology and method, discussed its problems, and composed commentaries and questions on Aristotle». Kristeller attributes the emphasis on the importance of Neoplatonism and the neglect of Aristotelianism to historians' tendency to, like journalists, «concentrate on news and to forget that there is a complex and broad situation which remained unaffected by the events of the moment» (p. 34). In advancing the view that Platonist and Aristotelian influences coexist in Cervantes's writing, we do not, however, wish to suggest that Renaissance humanists did not attack the Aristotelian-scholastic tradition. Many of them did; on the other hand, Ficino did not (see Kristeller, «Florentine Platonism and Its Relations with Humanism and Scholasticism», referred to by him in The Philosophy of Marsilio Ficino, p. 14), for Platonism and Aristotelianism coexist in his philosophy, as in León Hebreo's Diálogos de amor, (see Kristeller The Philosophy of Marsilio Ficino 236 and Hebreo 314). Also, according to Hamlyn, the empiricist theory of knowledge developed by Aquinas is incorrectly attributed to Aristotle. Hamlyn points out that in De anima the context of Aristotle's discussion of sense-perception has been misinterpreted, since (unlike that of Plato) it is not epistemological but is intended to elucidate concepts of the philosophy of mind (that the acquisition of intellectual knowledge, like sense-perception, is a process from potentiality to actuality: see Hamlyn 17-18). Hamlyn's observations would seem to provide additional evidence for the view that there is less of an antagonism between Plato and Aristotle on epistemological concerns than is commonly thought.

Some critics have felt that the preference expressed in this passage by the unnamed knight and friend of Darinto for the latter, Aristotelian theory over the Platonist theory can be identified with a preference on Cervantes's part, but such a view is pure speculation.

See Forcione 13 for bibliography on criticisms of the books of chivalry, as well as his discussion on pp. 13-27.

On moral value-being's independence of realizability in a volitional act, see Scheler 348-50.

Américo Castro has proven that Cervantes was influenced by the Neoplatonist theories of Bembo, Erasmus, and Castiglione (pp. 85-90). What evidence is there that Cervantes was familiar with Aristotelian-Thomist epistemological theories distinguishing between sense-experience and intelligibility and could have had them in mind when he elaborated Don Quijote's ideas on the subject of enchantment? In general, the premises of the present study are consistent with Forcione's thesis that through the figure of Don Quijote (his ideas and actions), Cervantes sought «the liberation of art from the mimetic theories that dominated the mainstream of literary theorizing of the sixteenth century» (p. 121) and that were based on a misreading of Aristotle's Poetics (pp. 45-48, 346). In the Poetics Aristotle distinguishes between a historical and factual truth (the proper subject of historiography) and an ideal, aesthetic truth (the proper subject of poetry). Thus, even if Cervantes had not had access to the details of Aristotle's ideas on epistemology, the concept of a creative mental activity that is independent of the factuality of sense-data would have been present to him. However, it is more than likely that Cervantes was well aware of the theories of perception of Aristotle and Aquinas. Whereas Américo Castro, for example, felt the need to document probable traces and definite evidence of Neoplatonic thought in Cervantes's writings, in Renaissance Spain «la filosofía aristotélica predomina ampliamente sobre la platónica» («Aristotelian philosophy predominates widely over Platonic philosophy»: Fraile I, 231). Aristotelianism was the official philosophy in sixteenth-century Spain (Abellán 173). It would have been difficult for Cervantes not to know about such theories, even if his knowledge came more from conversations than from reading. There can be no doubt that he was interested in the subject. Yet his knowledge may well have come from reading as well. There is a reference in the Quijote (I, 47) to the Súmulas by Gaspar Cardillo de Villapando, an important textbook in Spanish universities. The «Súmulas» is not a discussion of De anima but a presentation of Aristotle's theories in logic; however, the same author wrote a commentary on Aristotle's De anima entitled Apologia Aristotelica adversus eos, qui aiunt sensisee animam cum corpore extingui published in Alcalá in 1560 and in 1569 (Solana 112-16, Díaz-Díaz 146-47, Abellán 176-79). Yet the most famous commentator on Aristotle's De anima was Pedro Martínez Brea, who published his In libros tres Aristotelis De anima Commentarii in Sigüenza in 1575. Let us recall that Castro (p. 106) believes Cervantes to have had a good command of Latin. Martínez de Brea «señala las diferencias entre el apetito sensitivo, que sólo atiende al tiempo presente, y otro intelectivo que atiende al presente, pasado y futuro» («points out the differences between the sensory inclination, which only notices the present, and the other, intellective inclination, which notices present, past and future»: Abellán 179-80). Even if Cervantes had not read or heard of the epistemological theories attributed directly to works by Aristotle, he was sure to have heard about or read Thomas Aquinas's important elaboration. The sixteenth century was the golden age of Thomism both in Spain and Italy. The principal faculty positions in theology were reserved by universities (even in Alcalá de Henares) for the teaching of Thomist doctrine. As Bell observes, at the time «those obstinate questionings of sense and outward things were in the air of Europe» (p. 118). Cervantes did not use philosophical terminology or explicitly broach the issues discussed in this study: he used the language of fiction. As Américo Castro notes, «Cervantes was not a philosopher, but dramatized in his works, especially in the Quijote, one of the central problems that caused unrest in modern thought in the dawn of the formation of the great systems» ( p. 89, my translation). With a perspective different from our own, Robert Felkel has published an interesting article in which he argues that Don Quijote's «madness» is a paradigm of intellection's failure due to deficiencies in sensory perception and the associated processes as they are described in Aristotelian-Thomist theories of perception («Aristóteles, Santo Tomás y la percepción sensorial en el Quijote»).

For a discussion of the relation between ethical and aesthetic values, of how there is a series of aesthetic qualities that are bound to the ethical conduct of persons and are conditioned by it, see Hartmann 2, 403-405.

In the concluding observations of his book The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas, Umberto Eco points out, in general terms, some of the connections between scholasticism and structuralism. Among his comments are the following: «In fact the claim of Scholastic thought is that it does resolve the real into explanatory models -except that these models are believed to be features of reality, not just constructs of the intellect. Still, in medieval disputes about universals, the opposition between nominalism and conceptualism was expressed in terms similar to those used nowadays in Structuralism. It is not altogether clear whether Structuralism would persevere to the end in denying an ontological significance to their epistemological models. At all events, both the Scholastics and the Structuralists engage in inquiries based upon the notion of universals... It is not by chance that one of the most important issues in contemporary Structuralism is the investigation of linguistic universals. It matters little that these are universals of human psychology and are therefore brain structures, not Platonic universals. More important is the final outcome of this debate, namely the reaffirmation of an atemporality in the structures of the mind...» (pp. 217-18). I am indebted to Leo Cabranes Grant for knowledge of this reference.