Alexander Pisarev

This article reviews the possible role of the universal basic income in the transformation of experience in gender and age perspectives. The universal basic income has been particularly hotly debated in recent decades. Regardless of the position, the common tone of the debates is the imperative “we must experiment.” Such a close interest in the universal basic income derives from the fact that it threatens to change the “generic” for humans situation of finiteness of resources and the need to work. Thus, it is able to change the experience of what it means to be human. Since the universal basic income allows to separate labor from income, it is likely that its introduction will return value to the currently stigmatized or devalued types of labor, such as child care, elderly care or domestic work. It creates opportunities for experience redistribution in gender perspective: care and leaving, affective connection, and sensitivity could become the business of both parents, not just mothers. Another experience redistribution is possible in age perspective. Along with automation of labor, population ageing is a universal process that will sooner or later affect all the countries. Alarmist narratives that present this process as a threat and a problem now prevail. They are largely based on outdated ideas about old age and what it means to be old. However, in fact, ageing is the maturation of the population as a whole. With a proper re-evaluation of the meaning and significance of old age, the introduction of the universal basic income could create material conditions for the transfer of experience from the elderly to the younger – for the first time since traditional societies.

This article outlines an approach to social philosophy as empirical philosophy. Each philosophical act is localized and performed by a particular author in a particular context and agenda. Based on ideas of Kant, Heidegger, Foucault, it is suggested to understand this fact through double structure of finitude. On the one hand, social scientist within his finite existence is produced by the complex of instances, each bearing particular existence and historicity, such as language, social patterns, gender, etc. The fact that he is always-already produced by the world and entangled in it implies that his thinking is potentially contaminated by meanings imposed by these instances. On the other hand, his knowledge is finite that means inherent divide between social reality and discourse about it. This position of a social scientist implies the feautures of social philosophy approach, such as instrumentalization of concepts, separation of method from ontology, empiricism, plasticity of borders of the social and its historicity. In conclusion several examples of the approach are provided.