In his novel Don Quixote Miguel Cervantes obviously is not content with identifying the real world exclusively with the realm of ordinary experience. The rejection of any role for higher ideals in the world would seem inevitably to reduce to an attitude of selfish materialism, which is clearly not the attitude of Cervantes. The very affection with which he writes of the character Don Quixote indicates that he too wants to find a place in the real world for higher ideals, and while parodying works about knight-errantry, he seems to see value in some of the ideals glorified in the tradition of knight-errantry. Such ideals can, and indeed must, be seen in the real world, but it is also clear from this novel that some qualifications need to be placed on that. Don Quixote himself, while embracing higher ideals, clearly is not the exemplar for people to imitate in living out such ideals.

Don Quixote truly sees something that many people around him are missing. He is right to look for something beyond the mundane. However, in a certain sense Don Quixote makes the same mistake many others do, but acts on that mistake in the opposite direction. Others see life as mundane, and accept it as such, while Don Quixote sees life as mundane, but rejects it as such. Rather than accepting the world as he commonly experiences it as containing higher meaning within itself, in many cases he seems to transform reality in his mind to fit his idea of a world in which he can transcend the mundane. This is what makes him insane, to whatever extent he is insane, and results in problems such as the injuries he does to presumably innocent people: attacking sheep and monks probably is not the right way to pursue high ideals! In going beyond the mundane to recognize and appreciate a higher level of reality, one must see the romance, excitement, love and opportunities for heroic virtue precisely in the real experiences of everyday life. Everyday life itself is not mundane.

The problem with Don Quixote, then, has nothing to with the high ideals he embraces. In embracing such ideals and particularly in his devotion to an idealistic love, he is in touch with reality and affects reality in a way that those who would oppose him from a standpoint of mundane materialism cannot. An example is his encounter with the two prostitutes at the inn in the beginning of his adventures. When Don Quixote supposes the prostitutes to be great ladies, it is not simply the case that he is entirely wrong and everyone else is entirely right. He treats these women with respect and attributes a dignity to them which others would deny, and in truth of course these women in fact have a high and unique dignity as human beings, specifically as women, despite their faults. In fact, in a sense the problem with their lives is precisely that they have failed to attribute the same significance to themselves and their nature that Don Quixote does in his delusions. Perhaps it is not far-fetched to suppose that if others treated them more as Don Quixote treats them, they might truly be better persons.

Although Don Quixote loses touch with reality to some extent, those who reject any higher meaning and ideals behind the experiences of everyday life are themselves denying an aspect of reality. Throughout the novel, in the real world, not just in Don Quixote's imagination, it is often precisely the kind of high ideals he values which drive events. There are a number of love stories involving people marrying or pursuing a spouse (or rejecting prospective spouses) based on love of one kind or another, not for the reasons of wealth or social status which a materialist viewpoint would understand. A view which reduces reality to the realm of material experience cannot fully and consistently explain these aspects of reality, while for Don Quixote they are quite natural, because authentic love not only fits into his understanding of things, but lies at the center of his view of the world. In this way, Don Quixote was right about the way to transcending the mundane, however deceived he was in the practice of it. The key to his pursuit of knight-errantry, and to all that is best in his way of understanding reality, is seeing and approaching everything from the perspective of love. The love for Dulcinea del Toboso informs all of the actions of Don Quixote, even if the supposed object of his love is disconnected from reality. Don Quixote declares that a knight-errant must be in love: "'tis not more essential for the Skies to have Stars; than 'tis for us to be in Love … no History has ever made mention of any Knight-Errant, that was not a Lover; for were any Knight free from the Impulses of that generous Passion, he wou'd not be allow'd to be a lawful Knight." (Part I, Book I, Chapter IV). While at times perhaps this love seems to be seen by Don Quixote in the light of an absurd kind of courtly love, the overall vision of love in the novel, as presented in Don Quixote himself and in the various love stories, seems truly idealistic in the best sense: authentic love is not mere lust, is permanent, is not concerned with what the lover can gain for himself, is unconditional, and values virtue. Indeed, the love of Don Quixote for Dulcinea ultimately seems to have a religious character, involving charity and love of God as well as romantic love.

The death of Don Quixote clearly is also important for the interpretation of the novel. Here we see a judgment that his pursuit of knight-errantry, although admirable in its goals, was indeed misguided and irrational in its execution. In the end, he thanks God for restoring him to sanity. It is important to note in this context that the end of the novel emphasizes the kind of man Alonso Quixano was before he became Don Quixote, which perhaps changes our perspective somewhat on the change in him that led him to become Don Quixote. He is "Alonso Quixano, the same whom the world for his fair Behaviour had been formerly pleased to call the Good," and he "had always shew'd himself such a good natur'd Man, and of so agreeable a Behaviour, that he was not only belov'd by his Family, but by every one that knew him." (II, III, LXXIV). Don Quixote shows real virtue in many ways in his pursuit of knight-errantry, but here we seem to see that it is not the pursuit of knight-errantry that makes him a virtuous man, but rather his personal virtue informs his pursuit of knight-errantry. The emphasis at the end of the novel, then, seems to be that it is the virtue and goodness that are truly important, and make both the mad Don Quixote and the sane Alonso Quixano praiseworthy.

The stories of knight-errantry which Cervantes parodies in Don Quixote seem to have perpetuated in fiction exact forms of behavior in which chivalry was carried out in a bygone age, or in some cases forms of behavior that would have been absurd at any time and hopefully were never carried out in the authentic age of chivalry. Still, Don Quixote is in his pursuit of knight-errantry is striving for something good. That is why, despite all the satire in the novel, there is something poignant about the story. Don Quixote has such a strong desire to do good and great things, but seeks to do so without regard to the reality of himself and the world around him. He seeks higher realities, and a life lived in the perspective of love, but outside of the context of his time, in an imagined reality that is no more, and strictly speaking never was. He is right to aspire to great ideals in life, and to recognize in a sense that it is the through the eyes of love that reality is seen most truly. However, in order to see things from this perspective, we should not attempt to escape the realm of our "ordinary" experience, but rather to see that the highest ideals can and must be pursued in the context of our own human experience, and that our own lives place us in the context of a great drama and romance.