At the Source of Gossens Laws

The aim of the article is to present how Gossen explained the fundamental rule that defines fulfilling the life goal of every man - a rule of equimarginalism. Gossen's explanation is surprisingly different from the explanation offered by microeconomics' handbooks. In the first part the article presents short biography of Gossen and unusual history of his work and the rules formulated there. The second part presents original Gossen's arguments explaining equimarginalism. At present we usually treat utility as a function of consumption and therefore as a growing function. Gossen represented pleasure as the time related function. It is a different kind of function and therefore it has got different characteristics. The explanation of equimarginalism proposed by Gossen is worth remembering because of the role of time factor and the decision aspect. The G. Becker's (1965) function of consumption that accepts time as a part of consumer's costs to attain utility may be understood as development of Gossen ideas formulated in 1854. Gossen's understanding of decision aspect's importance has come 80 years prior to the L. Robbin's (1932) definition of the economy's research subject that understood management as a decision making process. The third reason to remember original Gossen argument: the equimarginalism rule points out to utility as a quality in the perspective of acting man. On the basis of the active decision making process L. Mises (1949) has constructed praxaeological theory of final utility. In Gossen work one can see the seeds of that theory too.