See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/272172496

Forgotten Classics: Reason in Society

Article  in  Regional Insights · January 2013

DOI: 10.1080/20429843.2013.10796002

CITATIONS READS

0 119

1 author:

Tore Sager
Norwegian University of Science and Technology
69 PUBLICATIONS   1,703 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE

All content following this page was uploaded by Tore Sager on 13 February 2015.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

Volume 4, Issue 2
 Regional Insights Volume 4, Issue 2 pp 22 ISSN 2042-9843
Forgotten Classics
Tore Sager recalls the intellectual freedom achieved by escaping from the prison of economic rationality.
P
aul Diesing (1922-2011) was a philosopher who,
throughout most of his career, investigated the role of
rationality, methodology, and ideology in social science
research. His book on Reason in Society is obviously written by
an intellectual with wide interests, yet patient and careful in
statement. It has nothing of the methodological narrowness
or the chauvinist attitude to a particular discipline that I found
in some economic literature which I read as an early career
academic.
The key to Diesing’s approach is a pluralistic view. Reason
is not a single undifferentiated entity, but exists in a variety of
forms. He analyses technical, economic, legal, social and political
rationality. Half a century ago, economics held a strong position
among the social sciences, and it was important to ask if only
the economists commanded genuinely rational procedures, and
to critically examine the idea that the other social disciplines
did not merit the title of ‘rational’ or ‘scientific’. Diesing’s central
concern in the book is summed up in his concluding sentence:
‘Social and political rationality are the most neglected of the
forms of rationality today and their study is the most important,
both in theoretical terms and in relation to the principal world
problems of today’ (p247). The ordinary conception identified
reason with efficiency in the pursuit of given ends, and this was
the conception Diesing wished to correct.
It may be of interest to planners that Reason in Society
received a very flattering review from Edward C Banfield,
co-author of the planning classic Politics, Planning, and the Public
Interest (1955). He judged the chapter on political rationality
to be the best. For Diesing, politics is decision-making, but
especially decision-making with respect to the preservation
and improvement of decision structures. Economic decisions
are reached by considering a problem in its own terms, and
by evaluating proposals according to how well they solve the
problem. As part of this procedure, compromise is always
irrational. The rational procedure is to calculate which proposal
is the best, and to accept it. In a political decision, on the other
hand, action is never based on the merits of a proposal but
always on who makes it and who opposes it. Communication
is necessary; the best available proposal should never be
accepted just because it is best. It should be deferred, objected
to, discussed, until major opposition disappears. In contrast to
economics, compromise is almost always a rational procedure
in politics, even when the compromise is between a good and
a bad proposal. This insight was a direct inspiration for my own
doctoral thesis, Communicate or Calculate (1990), on contrasting
ways to solve problems in planning. As Diesing remarks,
political rationality is the only unconditional value, since it
makes all other values achievable. Without a well-functioning
political decision-making structure, society cannot achieve
much.
I was educated in Oslo, in an economics department
where the teaching was heavily influenced by the economist
Leif Johansen and the Nobel laureates Ragnar Frisch and
Trygve Haavelmo. I intended to be a transport economist,
but at the time of graduation (1970) such an incredible lot of
Tore Sager is Professor of Transport Planning in the Department of Civil and Transport Engineering at the Norwegian University of
Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim, Norway.
22
things were happening in politics and planning. In the wake
of the turmoils of 1968, there was a sharp rise in interest in
participatory processes. Public planning opened up towards
implementation theory, environmental consequences, and
lay people. This matched my political inclinations and set off
my career as a planning theorist. Andreas Faludi’s book on
Planning Theory (1973) was a great inspiration, and that is where
I first encountered Diesing’s ideas about social and political
rationality. What a relief it was to discover that there were
alternatives to the simplistic and monomaniac utility-maximising
behaviour of ‘economic man’, which economics professors had
persuaded me to accept as the only rational behaviour and the
only fruitful foundation for modelling in the social sciences. In its
place, I was now able to put social rationality with its goalless,
integrative decisions for problem-solving in social organisations
and small-group processes. Integration cannot be forced on
people; the process is much like the logic of Habermasian
dialogue, in which mutual understanding emerges without
pressure from any party.
Critics have questioned whether there really are, deep
down, different forms of rationality. Furthermore, they have
pointed out that the interpretation of the legal is too narrow
in Diesing’s book, that the category of the ‘social’ has the same
ambiguities as the famous category of ‘Gemeinschaft’, and that
political rationality of collective decision-making is perhaps not
the supreme function of society. Despite this, Reason in Society
has a lot to offer young academics of today. The book’s critique
of instrumental reason is much easier to grasp than Jürgen
Habermas’s very abstract and lengthy account, and Diesing’s
explanation of social rationality is an informative supplement
to Habermas’s communicative rationality, enhancing the
understanding of deliberation processes. The most immediate
dragon to be slain in Diesing’s analysis is that of the reduction of
all social reasoning to economising. This is an urgent battle even
in the new millennium, because of the pronounced economism
of neo-liberalism, currently the prevalent ideology. Finally,
Diesing’s analysis sheds light on the tensions between the
roles of planners and politicians and helps us understand why
planners’ analytic contributions cannot be the most important
input to political decision-making in democracies.
Reason in Society. Five
Types of Decisions and Their
Social Conditions by Paul
Diesing
First published in 1962 by
University of Illinois Press, Urbana.
 Editorial 2
Editors of Regional Insights

EU cohesion policy: how to deliver more tangible results? 3

Marcin Dąbrowski

Cheers to productive rail journeys 4

Kristinn Hermannsson

New approaches to classifying sectoral change 5

Viktorija Šipilova

Understanding the peri-urban economy: the case of Copenhagen 6

Christian Kjær Monsson

Metropolitan economic efficiency: Imbalances and decay in Mexico 9

Alejandra Trejo Nieto

How to develop creative quarters? The way of co-governance 12

Martina Lauderbach

The role of politics in the planning process 15

Federica Leone

Narrating the link: connecting cities and infrastructure 18

Kristi Grišakov

Recent Publications 21
Bas van Heur

Forgotten Classics 22
Tore Sager

One for the Road... 23

Adrian Healy

Contributors
Dr Marcin Dąbrowski is Researcher at Dr Federica Leone obtained a Masters
the Department of Urbanism, TU Delft, The in International Planning and Development at
Netherlands. Cardiff University, Wales, and a PhD at the
marcindabrowski@op.pl University of Cagliari, Italy.
federicaleone@unica.it
Kristi Grišakov is a PhD Candidate in
the Department of Real Estate, Planning and Christian Kjær Monsson is a
Geoinformatics at Aalto University, Helsinki, PhD Candidate in the Department of
Finland. Communication, Business and Information
kristigrishakov@gmail.com Technologies at Roskilde University, Denmark.
monsson@ruc.dk
Dr Adrian Healy is a Research Associate in
the Cardiff School of Planning and Geography, Dr Alejandra Trejo Nieto received a PhD
Cardiff University, UK. in Development Studies at the University of East
healya2@cardiff.ac.uk Anglia, UK and is a Researcher and Lecturer
at the Centre for Demographic, Urban and
Dr Kristinn Hermannsson is a Lecturer
Environmental Studies (CEDUA), El Colegio de
in Educational Economics at the School of
Mexico, Mexico City, Mexico.
Education, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK.
abtrejo@colmex.mx
kristinn.hermannsson@glasgow.ac.uk
Tore Sager is Professor of Transport Planning
Dr Bas van Heur is Director of Cosmopolis
in the Department of Civil and Transport
Centre for Urban Research and Assistant
Engineering at the Norwegian University of
Professor in Social Geography at Vrije
Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim,
Universiteit Brussel, Belgium.
Norway.
bvheur@vub.ac.be
tore.sager@ntnu.no
Martina Lauderbach has a Master’s
Viktorija Šipilova is a researcher at
degree in Geography focussing on city and
the Institute of Social Research, Daugavpils
regional development. She currently works as
University, Daugavpils, Latvia.
a project manager in an urban development
sipilova.viktorija@inbox.lv
support program at Büro Drecker, an office
for landscape architecture and environmental
planning in the Ruhr area in Germany.
martina.lauderbach@rub.de

View publication stats