I take Saint-Exupery's sentiment about the heart's efficacy to mean that emotion is the proper tool for grasping what is essential about life. We feel what is right. We know life's truths through the prodding of our heart. This notion has ancient roots that go back at least as far as Plato's formulation of “anamneses.” Anamnesis is the doctrine that our knowledge is rooted in a perfect realm beyond mere experience, which we can discover through some mystical process of feeling. Such notions of knowledge are widely held in our culture to this day. Moreover, there are legions of people who hold reason itself to be a coarse and unsophisticated faculty that does not grasp reality so much as it invents an idiosyncratic fantasy, peculiar to each individual, conditioned by the irresistible forces of race, gender, and class, stemming from the accident of a person's birth. Millions of people reject reason as a proper tool for making sense of the important problems of life.

I find it ironic that a seasoned aviator like Saint-Exupery would hold this mystical prodding of the heart as a proper guide to knowledge. Let's consider what this would mean in the cockpit of an airplane and then look again at the known facts surrounding John Kennedy's crash.

I have no idea what you are talking about.