There are moments when a discipline must pause and ask itself a simple, disarming question: what is it truly about?

Economics, in its origins, was never merely about models, indicators, or outputs. It was about human beings – about how we live, exchange, decide, and endure. And yet, somewhere along the way, the human figure receded, replaced by abstractions that explain much, but illuminate little.

What happens when economics returns to its starting point – to the human condition itself?

This question stood at the heart of the international seminar “Economics and the Human Condition: Bridging the Philosophical Gap”, launched by the Lithuanian Free Market Institute in Prague.

Rather than a sequence of presentations, the seminar unfolded as a Socratic dialogue – a deliberate choice. Sixteen European scholars, intellectuals, and think-tank leaders gathered not to assert conclusions, but to examine assumptions.

The conversation moved through four interconnected themes:

• How Understanding Lack Unfolds the Philosophy of Economics
• The Anthropology of Exchange: On the Underlying Fabric of Human Interaction
• Scarcity and the Ontology of Money
• Universal Basic Income and Social Experimentation with Reality

Each session returned, in its own way, to a central tension: whether economics describes reality – or increasingly, attempts to redesign it.

Selected moments from the seminar are captured in the photographs below.

In this light, Universal Basic Income was approached not merely as an economic proposal, but as a philosophical experiment.

What kind of society does it assume? What vision of the human person does it reflect? And what happens when such a vision is enacted at scale?

To experiment with policy is one thing. To experiment with the underlying structures of reality – work, value, responsibility, reciprocity – is something else entirely.

The discussion did not seek easy answers. Instead, it asked whether certain ideas, however well-intentioned, risk dissolving the very conditions that make human flourishing possible.

Among the speakers were Philip Booth and Sven Gerst, whose contributions reflected the seminar’s interdisciplinary depth – bridging economics, philosophy, and political thought.

But the significance of the seminar lies not in any single perspective. It lies in the recognition that economics cannot remain coherent if it loses sight of its foundation.

To speak about markets, money, or policy without speaking about the human person is to speak only in fragments.

The philosophical gap in economics is not a technical problem. It is a question of orientation. Do we begin with systems, or with people? Do we treat human behavior as something to be modeled – or as something to be understood? Bridging this gap does not require abandoning economics. It requires deepening it.

The seminar in Prague was a step in that direction: a return to dialogue, to first principles, and to the enduring question of what it means to build an economy that reflects – not replaces – the human condition.