Abstract

How might recognizing the literary influences behind political concepts shift our understanding of their meaning? This article explores how Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote shaped political concepts in the thought of the German jurist and Nazi Carl Schmitt. It does so by tracking Schmitt’s reflections on the Quixote throughout his oeuvre, from his early literary writings to his postwar book on Hamlet. Far from a curiosity, Schmitt’s scattered reflections on the Quixote show the extent to which his foundational political concepts of myth and the public have their roots in literary analysis, challenging Schmitt’s own account of the nonpolitical role of aesthetics in The Concept of the Political.