Rozum planujący, rozum improwizujący i prowincjonalizm (Planning Reason, Improvising Reason, and Provincialism). Przegląd Uniwersytecki, 10-12, 2012, 24-25.

Abstract

The article distinguishes two forms of rational activity: planning reason and improvising reason. Planning reason operates through prior reflection and systematic execution, while improvising reason integrates reflection and action in real time, responding flexibly to local constraints, available resources, and evolving goals. Using examples ranging from urban development to everyday conversation, the article argues that improvising reason, though easily mistaken for chaos, plays a dominant role in human practice. Failures to recognize its contextual rationality often lead to misguided accusations of irrationality. Such accusations are diagnosed as expressions of provincialism: the tendency to universalize one’s own local perspective and overlook the rational agency of others acting under different conditions.