Two of the planets visited by the Little Prince form, together, a precise critique of a way of thinking that dominates the adult world: instrumental rationality, the reason that treats everything as a means to an end and measures the value of things by their usefulness. The businessman and the geographer are his portraits.
The Businessman: Own to Be Rich
The fourth planet houses a man bent over endless bills. When the boy asks what he does, the answer comes automatically: he counts stars, to possess them, to be rich. Your whole life fits on a spreadsheet. He doesn't look up, he doesn't see the visitor, he just measures the world, but he no longer feels it.
The image resonates with Gregor Samsa, protagonist of Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis. The most tragic thing about Gregor is not waking up transformed into an insect, it's that he was already dehumanized before, reduced to the role of supporting his family. The businessman is Gregor before explicit metamorphosis: the soul flattened under the weight of a system that turns everything, even starlight, into property.
To this accumulation, the Little Prince opposes a phrase that contains the key to the chapter: "I have a flower that I water every day. It's what makes me rich." For the boy, value arises from the bond, not from possession; of the living relationship, not of quantification. Caring is more precious than counting.
The geographer: knowing without living
The sixth planet presents the same reason in another form. The geographer is surrounded by heavy books and maps, but he confesses that he has never seen an ocean or a mountain: he writes about what he does not see, because the explorers are the ones who come to him. It is the intellectual who accumulates data, but does not experience it; who knows the map, but never the landscape.
The Little Prince is strange: how can you name it without touching it? The work does not condemn knowledge, it condemns knowledge that has become disconnected from experience, science without love that becomes, in the words of the class itself, a map without territory.
The alternative: know to transform
Against this cold reason, the book proposes another type of knowledge, that which is born from the collision with the ground, from the crossing, from the bond. True knowledge does not transform the world into property, it transforms the subject. We accumulate so as not to feel fear, we count so as not to face the silence, but the brightness of the stars does not fit into boxes nor does the value of life fit into reports. To follow this review in detail, watch the full class.
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What is instrumental rationality in Pequeno Príncipe?
It is reason that treats everything as a means to an end: counting, possessing, cataloguing. It appears in the businessman, who has stars, and in the geographer, who knows about the map but has never seen the landscape.
Why is the businessman criticized?
Because it reduces life to a spreadsheet. He counts stars to possess them and be rich, but he no longer sees them or is enchanted. The Little Prince contrasts the value of the bond: caring is worth more than counting.
How does Kafka help to understand this topic?
The businessman is reminiscent of Gregor Samsa, from The Metamorphosis, who was already dehumanized, reduced to function, even before he became an insect. It is the soul suffocated by usefulness.
Go deeper: The 7 planets and what they mean · Alienation in Pequeno Príncipe · The essential is invisible to the eye
Source class (YouTube): O Pequeno Príncipe, de Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (NousCast)