"One must command from each what each can perform, the king went on. "Authority is based first of all upon reason. If you command your subjects to jump into the ocean, there will be a revolution. I am entitled to command obedience because my orders are reasonable."" Then my sunset?" insisted the little prince, who never let go of a question once he had asked it."You shall have your sunset. I shall command it. But I shall wait, according to my science of government, until conditions are favorable."I think we probably ask the most important questions when we are young, without knowing that we will be judged. As you get older, question asking is seen to be anti-conformist, whether or not the answer is known, the question must not be vocalised. In primary school, there was a guy who would never admit not knowing something. It reached a point where other kids in the class would talk about footballers that didn't exist, just to solicit imaginary facts from this guy. It actually go so far I think he almost got the guys name on the back of a football top. As it transpired, I think someone told him that the football player didn't exist, but he point blank said that he did and went into a big tale of transfers. Now, I think something like that goes beyond disillusion. I'm not even sure it was a case of him unwilling to be wrong, or trying to cover his tracks, and not be embarrassed. I think, if something is repeated, over and over, a justification, or an opinion can become a truth. I know, that truth is objective, and there is a vast resource of philosophical theories commenting on sensory misconception, dream worlds, and alternate universes, but there is something so primitively flawed with regards to knowledge.
We have Descartes who goes on the biggest roundabout of critical thought to prove God, but I will never forget my philosophy teacher telling the class that if he had not, under French law, he would have been sent to the guillotine. For this project what interests me about him is that he asked questions, and provided answers. However, depending on who you talk to, or rather, read from, he either did nothing, or everything for thought. He provided what he believed, or at least he published what he believed to be a critical theory for the existence of God. Now, there are too many narrow passageways that this topic could take, but this is not about anything other than the human, asking a question and providing the answer. It is fair to say, had he gone on to publish what some believe he would have, if not under threat of his life, a theory which in fact disproved the existence of God, it is fair to say that he would know more about the world than the executioner. What I mean is, he would have read more books, devised more theories, and articulated more 'accelerated' thought. For the sake of mankind and lets perhaps exclude vanity, Descartes was committing an act of thought, the process of questioning and answering, that would inevitably had some effect on the executioners life. Not however, as much effect as it would have had on Descartes life himself. So my question is, if as stated, he had published the "true" findings up to Meditation 3, proving that there was in fact no God, would the philosopher have, knowing his actions would result in beheading, killed himself. The executioner had his orders, "Behead the Heathen", yet would he have actually killed Descartes. I mean this in the most innocent way, not as a digression of terms. Does the man who commits himself to death with full intention end his life, or is it the man who pulls the guillotine rope?
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