A Language of Moral Universals in Modern Times: Pope Leo XIV’s Political Discourse in a New Key
Photo by Vjekoslav Domanović
How we talk about politics matters. Political discourse has of late been warped from the Right in several key ways, among them, for example, the re-defining of the multicultural education reform movement’s signature features of the last 40 years–diversity, equity, and inclusion–in Orwellian fashion as promoting one-sided classroom material that “intentionally establishes and promotes the preferential treatment of groups based on race, color, gender, ethnicity [and /] or national origin.” [1] These are the considered words of the Kansas State Board of Regents, July 2026. As such, DEI and CRT (critical race theory) are considered discriminatory against whites and must be prohibited from the higher education curriculum. Similarly, the Kansas Regents define CRT as anathema because it “presents racism as systemic within laws, policies or institutions.” This kind of double-speak characterizes the Right’s ongoing public messaging campaigns and its explicit intimidation of Leftist critique and protest. This official Kansas propaganda debacle echoes the viciously duplicitous discourse of MAGA Republicans like New York Congresswoman Elise Stefanik offering implicit support to right-wing Israeli politicians through highly publicized 2023 hearings in Washington, D.C. Stefanik used her inquisitor’s position to deflect legitimate criticism of Israeli war crimes and genocide in Gaza through accusations that twisted the motivation for the student protests in support of justice for Palestine through her loaded distortions amounting to slander―labeling protesters against genocide and ecocide in Gaza as advocating “genocidal antisemitism.”[2] The student activists led by the progressive anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace and also Students for Justice in Palestine were punished at Columbia for this purported genocidal antisemitism, when by their own account they were opposing the Israeli occupation of Palestine and advocating ceasefire. In this the now familiar manner in which language is being conspicuously manipulated to curb liberals and the Left.
Standing in sharp relief from this dark pattern of Orwellian discourse, voices of sanity still ring out: Bernie Sanders, Zohran Mamdani, and the Democratic Socialists of America, on the worthiness of a politics of peace and inclusivity, and an economics of affordability and democratic ownership of public resources. The DSA’s electoral candidates are gaining remarkably in their wide appeal to voters. Likewise, Erich Fromm’s societal critique and his utopian vision of human flourishing finds its contemporary relevance recently renewed as an impulse to progressive social movements today according to critical social theorists George Lundskow and Lauren Langman. Their new book, Visions of a Sane Society: Fromm and Critical Theory for a Free, Democratic, and Sustainable Future (Routledge, 2026), demonstrates the continuing political viability of Fromm. This derives from largely from a recollection of Fromm’s mid-century blockbuster volume Marx’s Concept of Man that for the first time introduced a humanist reading of Marx to the English-speaking world centering on the then-novel and now classic themes of human alienation and human authenticity. Now also clearly against poverty, war, social injustice, and the global “heat trap,” Lundscow and Langman underscore Fromm’s humanist spirit as advocating the power of critical political economy to obviate the endless accumulation of capital and its attendant reduction of human relations to commodity relations which have facilitated the formation of an alienated (pathological) social character as normal. Also emphasized is Fromm’s advocacy of the restorative power of love to facilitate a hearty and exuberant culture of shared experience as equals and to enable an ecologically viable communal effervescence of life—this vis à vis the pathological normalcy that legitimates the ruling classes, reproduces social institutions, and establishes patterns of subordination within the individual. It engenders the authoritarian character structure undergirding a mythological white supremacy and the aggressive masculinism of American fascism and the MAGA movement. In addition, Lundskow and Langman furnish a larger, Platonic, philosophical context to our modern predicament noting that the age of Thrasymachus–where might makes right—is still too much with us.[3]
As valid as I consider the discourse patterns of Fromm, Sanders, and the DSA to be, they are still a somewhat daunting and an acquired taste inaccessible to those readers not politically active on the Left. It is in this regard that Pope Leo XIV’s 2026 Encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas / Magnificent Humanity: On safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence has compelled my critical admiration. Pope Leo XIV brings an exquisitely vibrant use of language to contemporary political discourse focusing on the potential of the material human condition to reveal the magnificence of humanity in the face of an overpowering and alienating AI technology. My genuine appreciation for this language of moral universals derives from my own atheistic and critical Marxist humanism, which will necessarily also emerge in the course of this review.
Social Justice Uplifts the Magnificence of Humanity
Pope Leo XIV’s form of discourse is thoughtfully optimistic and philosophically rich aiming to honor humanity’s dignity—seen also as our magnificence—during these currently dark and trying times. Against the foil of today’s destructive political economic turmoil, “[e]ach generation inherits the task of shaping its own era, of guiding history to become a place where the dignity of every person is safeguarded, justice is promoted and fraternity is made possible. Yet every era also runs the risk of creating an inhumane and more unjust world” (1) [All parenthetical numbers refer to one of the 245 paragraphs of Leo XIV’s letter identically enumerated in multiple editions of the Encyclical]. We must all “address the real suffering of the men and women of our time. . . [and] draw near to the wounds of humanity whenever they surface with greater severity” (21). “The Church regards all who sincerely seek ‘truth, goodness and beauty’ as companions on the journey, and considers them as ‘precious allies’ in defending the dignity of every person and in caring for creation” (23).
Pope Leo XIV is elaborating the Social Doctrine of the Church in a new key. I will present him speaking primarily in his own terms as he seeks to unfold “a legacy of wisdom, where we find principles for thought, criteria for discernment and judgment, and concrete guidelines for action” (3). This legacy is articulated first of all in terms of inalienable moral universals.
The Foundations of “The Social Doctrine” include familiar civic touchstones: the inviolability of the human person (48), the equal dignity of all human beings (51), the supreme value of human rights (54), and the principle of the common good (59). Less familiar are principles denoting a vision of the commons—the “universal destination of goods,” (65) as well as the principles of local control, shared responsibility, and freedom, i.e. “subsidiarity” (68), and the principle of universal human solidarity (73).
The universal destination of goods is an admittedly archaic locution updated in the following manner by Leo XIV: “The earth’s goods — soil, water, air and natural resources — are given by God to the entire human family to sustain the lives of all, and that every person has an inherent right to the use of such goods, both now and in the future. Saint John Paul II recalled that, ‘God gave the earth to the whole human race for the sustenance of all its members, without excluding or favoring anyone.’ Consequently, ‘it is not in accordance with God’s plan to use this gift in such a way that its benefits accrue solely to a select few.’” (65) “Certainly, there is a right to private property, which has its own specific meaning and purpose, yet it is always subordinate to the universal destination of goods. According to John Paul II, this subordination is the golden rule of social conduct and the ‘first principle of the whole ethical and social order.’ . . . When lived out in its fullest sense, it also means ‘to restore to the poor what belongs to them’” (66).
Subsidarity, as a principle of local control, shared responsibility, and freedom, is explicated as follows: “[H]igher-level institutions must recognize, protect and promote the freedom and creativity of lower-level entities, coordinating their contributions so that they can cooperate effectively for the common good.” (68) “[N]either the individual nor the family should be subsumed by the State, but should be allowed to act freely, as far as possible, without harming the common good.” [69] “[D]decisions are [to be] made at the closest level possible to the persons involved, thereby fostering community life and avoiding people being presented with decisions that have already been taken. In this way people can participate in the decision-making process.” (70).
Solidarity “arises precisely when we decide not to remain indifferent to what happens to our neighbor but instead to transform unavoidable bonds—economic, cultural, and technological—into paths of sharing, cooperation and mutual care, embracing the idea of ‘thinking and acting in terms of community.’” (74). “[T]he good of each person depends on the good of others. As a virtue, it requires a ‘firm and persevering determination’ to strive for the common good, with particular attention to those most in need. Pope Francis noted that solidarity is ‘a way of making history’ that creates communities and not just masses of individuals. For this reason, it requires a modest and shared way of life, the ability to forego immediate benefits in order to create opportunities for others in the future.” (75)
All of this culminates in the principle of social justice. “[E]very institution is called to serve the human person and his or her dignity. Social justice is, therefore, characterized by the capacity of a social, economic and political order to allow everyone—particularly the weakest—to live a truly dignified life, without leaving anyone behind.” (77) “Saint John Paul II spoke of a preferential option for the poor.” (78) “[I]njustices do not arise solely from the wrong choices of individuals, but also from structures, mechanisms and economic and cultural systems that produce inequality almost automatically. . . . [J]ustice is not merely about the fairer distribution of resources or the correction of current injustices, but also assumes a restorative dimension. It aims to mend broken bonds and reintegrate those who have been excluded, taking into account the wounds caused by injustices, such as wars, colonialism, racial or gender discrimination, violence against entire peoples and exploitation. This may include restoring dignity and a voice to those who have been ignored, fostering processes of healing for collective memory, opposing discriminatory laws and practices, and providing concrete support to those who still bear the consequences of wrongs suffered in the past.” (79)
Universals Empower Social Critique and Social Change
Pope Leo XIV himself stresses the necessity, but not sufficiency, of the ahistorical and asociological criteria of judgment embodied in a universal humanist approach to ethics. While everyone of us is enjoined to “support with humble firmness the choices that promote the dignity of every person, the cohesion of communities and the good of all” (20), “the Church allows itself to be challenged by the signs of the times, and draws nourishment from the contributions of science, culture and human experience. Therefore, when the dignity of our brothers and sisters is violated, when politics fails to address the tragedies of humanity, when the economy turns against the person or science oversteps the limits of its competence, the Church—together with other Christian denominations and believers of other religions—must make her voice heard.” (27).
In other words, historical and sociological changes require thoughtful consideration, without which our universal ethical standards are insufficient, both in terms of logic and a philosophy of human dignity. Only a rational appraisal of new circumstances will meet the challenges of the era. Pope Leo XIV himself stresses this, taking his name from Leo XIII, who in 1891 issued the Encyclical Rerum Novarum (new circumstances). “The Social Doctrine of the Church began to take shape as an organic corpus of social teaching . . . confronted with the ‘new things’ of his time [1891]—the conflict between capital and labor, the question of the workforce, and economic and social transformations—Leo XIII did not limit himself merely to acknowledging the unrest, but saw these situations as an area for the Church’s pastoral mission.” (29) “The document places the dignity of work and of workers at the forefront of its reflection; affirms the right to a fair wage for oneself and one’s family; recognizes that persons have a fundamental value that takes precedence over capital and profit; defends private property along with its indispensable societal role; esteems workers’ associations; and proposes forms of cooperation between the different components of society as an alternative to the mentality of class struggle” (30).[4]
The Pope’s focus on the importance of human labor is itself emanciparory, seeking to affect the structures of society. “[T]he primacy of human labor over any mindset focused solely on finance or productivity—with the consequent attention to the people and families most susceptible to exploitation—and the inseparable link between proclaiming the Gospel and pursuing a more just social order. Rerum Novarum thereby continues to remind us that there is no authentic evangelization that does not also affect the structures of human society.” (30) “Rather than limiting itself to addressing the ‘workforce question, it [a related 1931 statement from Pope Pius XI] broadened its focus to encompass the overall structure of the economic and political order. The Encyclical denounces the concentration of economic power in the hands of a few; criticizes both unlimited competition and collectivist projects that undermine the freedom and responsibility of the individual; strongly affirms the workers’ right to association; and reiterates the requirement that wages be proportionate not only to performance, but also to the needs of workers and their families.” (31)
Leo XIV reiterates similarly worker-centered pronouncements on the capitalist economy by Popes Paul VI and John Paul II to the effect that: “the Church recognizes the positive potential of the market and private initiative only if they remain subordinate to the moral law and are guided by the principle of solidarity, without sacrificing the most vulnerable to the rationale of profit. This adds a particularly relevant legacy to the Social Doctrine of the Church. The affirmation of the link between the dignity of work, solidarity among peoples, a critical assessment of democracy and the market economy continues to provide criteria for evaluating new forms of exploitation, exclusion and crises in political representation.” (39).
All of the above discussion is preparatory to Leo XIV’s own specific contribution to the new iteration of his Church’s Social Doctrine. The central question he addresses is: What does it mean to safeguard humanity in today’s changed world? He sees his role as protecting freedom in the digital age by defending the dignity of work against commercialized dependency. We are threatened by a temptation to thoughtlessness given AI’s promise of a perfect machine to think for us! This resonates with the work of Herbert Marcuse in One-Dimensional Man (1964), who warned that advanced industrial society had entered the time of a “comfortable, smooth, reasonable, democratic unfreedom . . . a token of technical progress” (Marcuse 1964, 1). For Leo XIV, “[T]he root of these problems lies [in] a technocratic and post-humanist mentality that tends to regard the human person as an object to be manipulated or a resource to be optimized, removing all safeguards against the unchecked pursuit of profit. What prevails is efficiency, rather than respect for freedom and human dignity. Some post-humanist currents even go so far as to envision ‘second-class’ human beings, subordinate to the interests of elites who consider themselves superior. This troubling prospect becomes all the more serious when combined with technological tools that exponentially increase the capacity for control and selection.” (172) For Leo XIV, this manipulated unfreedom becomes, at its extremes, the contemporary barbarism of human trafficking and modern forms of slavery deriving from the commodification of persons: “[T]he Church renews her firm condemnation of all forms of slavery, trafficking and the commodification of persons. She likewise highlights the urgent need for reflection and action that keep the inalienable dignity of every human being and the common good, as both the focus and goal of society, as well as the guiding criteria for every personal, social and political choice. Without this ethical and humanizing reflection, the growing power of digital systems could lead us toward new atrocities that are no less shameful than those of the past that we now deplore, while we continue to present ourselves as ‘advanced’ and ‘civilized’ societies.” (174)
Ethical reflection on current affairs in light of humanist universals is required to protect us from “new atrocities” through a recollection of former evils which we have come to deplore (slavery, genocide). The old motto, “Never Again,” has renewed currency; Herbert Marcuse took this also as a key standard of contemporary critical political theory: “The goal of radical change today is the emergence of human beings who are physically
and mentally incapable of inventing another Auschwitz” (Marcuse [1979] 2011, 213). In One-Dimensional Man he also devotes an entire chapter to what he calls the historical reality of universals (Marcuse 1964, 210). “The substantive universal intends qualities which surpass all particular experience, but persist in the mind, not as a figment of the imagination nor as mere logical possibilities, but as the ‘stuff’ of which our world consists” (Marcuse 1964, 213). Marcuse wanted also to help labor reclaim its fullest human political potential, where, with gratitude for all things made and appreciation for all things of this earth, we struggle to become more fully who we are.
Leo XIV’s Chief Aims: Disarming AI and ‘Just War’ Theory
“In the era of artificial intelligence, when human dignity is threatened by new forms of dehumanization, ours is the pressing duty to remain profoundly human. We must lovingly safeguard the grandeur of humanity bestowed upon us and revealed in its fullness in Christ, the splendor of which no machine can ever replace. True progress always stems from a heart open to others, an intelligence willing to listen and a will that seeks what unites rather than what separates.” (15) “Technological innovations, including artificial intelligence, are not neutral, for they can either foster participation and justice or exacerbate inequality, control and exclusion. For this reason, they must be evaluated by asking a crucial question: Do they truly help individuals and peoples to become more humane and fraternal, while respecting our common home and future generations?” (85)
Leo XIV wants to “ensure that it will always be human intelligence, with its conscience and freedom, that guides technical innovations and responsibly determines their use and limits.” (97) “AI tends to amplify the power of those who already possess economic resources, expertise and access to data. In light of the common good and the universal destination of goods, this raises serious concerns, since small but highly influential groups can shape information and consumption patterns, influence democratic processes and steer economic dynamics to their own advantage, undermining social justice and solidarity among peoples.” (108)
Like Marcuse Leo XIV warns that the growth of the military industrial complex defines our era (193). “[T]he arms market becomes an autonomous driving force behind military decisions” (193). In what may well appear as his most radical language, Leo XIV call us upon us to “disarm” AI. “Disarming AI means freeing it from the mentality of ‘armed’ competition, which today is not limited simply to the military context, but is also an economic and cognitive phenomenon. This entails a race for ever more powerful algorithms and larger datasets, driven by the desire to secure geopolitical or commercial dominance. To disarm means discrediting the assumption that technical power automatically confers the right to govern. To disarm does not mean rejecting technology, but preventing it from dominating humanity. It means freeing technology from monopolistic control and opening it to discussion and debate, therefore making it human-friendly and restoring it to the plurality of human cultures and ways of life.” (110) “Nor can we ignore the enormous economic interests behind war. The armaments industry, and countries that supply weapons, profit from a market that thrives precisely on conflicts. In this sense, there are also financial interests that contribute to fueling tensions in various regions of the world.” (193)
Leo XVI also stresses that we live today in a violent culture of power revolving around those who profit from conflict and the arms industries. He wishes to safeguard humanity from war as an instrument of international politics. Quite astonishingly he asserts that the Church’s venerable just war theory is now outdated! “[H]umanity is slipping into a violent culture of power, where peace no longer appears as a responsibility to be taken on, but as a fragile interval between conflicts. Today, more than ever, without prejudice to the right to self-defense in the strictest sense, it is important to reaffirm that the ‘just war’ theory, which has all too often been used to justify any kind of war, is now outdated. Humanity possesses far more effective and capable tools for promoting human life and resolving conflicts, such as dialogue, diplomacy and forgiveness. The use of force, violence and weapons reflects a relational poverty that always has disastrous consequences for civilian populations.” (192)
Minimum Goals of Social Doctrine and Radical Goals of Socialism
Pope Leo XIV’s articulation of a renewed Social Doctrine in Magnifica Humanitas is astonishingly fresh with unexpected strengths, especially at the level of a discourse on humanity’s grandeur and its potential for realization. Older ideological weakness of Catholic Social Doctrine persist, however, as noted above. A critical Marxist like Herbert Marcuse would appreciate Leo XIV’s ardent defense of the minimal standards required for the provision of adequate social-needs-oriented programs and services such as housing, health care, childcare, and education, to everyone, ensuring an attempt to optimize the human material condition. From this shared political perspective, what the world needs now is a strategy grounded in the most radical goals of reason to oppose resurgent racism, bigoted patriotism, and the warlike nationalism inherent in the “ripening and rotting” of global capitalism (Marcuse [1974] 2015, 13).
Yet, for Marcuse. we must “revive the radical rather than the minimum goals of socialism” (Marcuse 1972, 5). For Marcuse, these go beyond the elimination of want and poverty through efficient production and distribution of use-values: they involve a “qualitative leap” against “the fragmentation of work, the necessity and productivity of stupid performances and stupid merchandise, against the acquisitive bourgeois individual, against the servitude in the guise of technology, deprivation in the guise of the good life, against pollution as a way of life” (Marcuse 1972, 16-17). For Marcuse, an assemblage of radical goals and forces is afoot, moving toward racial equality, women’s equality, the liberation of labor, the restoration of nature, leisure, abundance, and peace. These new sensibilities have a catalytic power that can bring together a global alliance of revolutionary social energies to build a new social order. Marcuse pushes beyond Leo XIV’s social liberalism and social reform to seek a revolutionary reconstruction of social life with the highest potentials of our economy, technology, and human nature.
Marcuse’s work models the path by which we, an international political force of “the 99 percent,” can be politically prepared and strengthened. Private ownership of capital is clearly not necessary for the production of use values. The necessary component is labor. The sovereignty of the rich, the military industrial complex, and Wall Street, is to be negated.
His vision for a new ecosocialist world system is also animated by “utopian” ethical universals. As a species humanity has endured because of our sensuous appreciation of our emergent powers: the power to subsist cooperatively; to create, to communicate, and to care communally within that form of society that we may rightly call a commonwealth (Gemeinschaft). Even a thoroughly secular philosophy can recognize that organizing for social justice requires respect for others’ emancipatory spiritual needs. Critical and creative, Marcuse’s theory builds towards transnational transformation by furnishing new norms for understanding and for justice that enable us imaginatively to construct from within the realities of the present the partnership organizations of the future that will make possible new ways of holding resources and real opportunities for all persons to reclaim the full social power of learning, leadership, and labor. Labor, freed from its commodity form (as wages or salaries) through socialist revolution, is to become common work for the common wealth.
Marcuse believed that among the most radical goals of socialism are the aesthetic ones, and that social life needs to embody them. Labor’s liberation from commodification and sublation to the new commonwealth form allows human life to be infused with beauty from its foundation up—ultimately for the entire society to express itself as a work of art.
He talks about the aesthetic ethos becoming a gesellschaftliche Produktivkraft (Marcuse 1969, 126)—a social and productive force. He is thinking not just of the kind of aesthetic features that we could say distinguish the architecture of Haussmann’s Paris or the Venetian Piazza San Marco from everyday life at home. These architectural jewels are wonderful emblems of freedom and dignity, but they nonetheless serve primarily as ornaments that also conceal the fundamental disfigurement of their societies through brutal economic, political, and libidinous oppression. Paris and Venice do not represent (except as prefigurative impressions) the deeper aesthetic satisfactions that Marcuse proposed were needed for a truly liberated social formation. This would require human lives to be associated in egalitarian partnership such that each could access (as the norm in political life) non-repressive gratification and freedom. Marcuse’s project argues that a new system of ecological production, egalitarian distribution, shared ownership, and democratized governance is within reach, having its foundation in the ethics of partnership and an ecosocialist, humanist, commitment to living our lives on the planet consistent with the most honorable forms of human social and political fulfillment.
Works Cited
Marcuse, Herbert. [1979] 2011. “Ecology and the Critique of Modern Society,” in Douglas Kellner and Clayton Pierce (Eds.), Herbert Marcuse, Philosophy, Psychoanalysis and Emancipation: Volume 5, Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse. New York and London: Routledge.
Marcuse, Herbert. [1974] 2015. Paris Lectures at Vincennes University, 1974. Peter-Erwin Jansen and Charles Reitz (Eds.). Philadelphia, PA: International Herbert Marcuse Society.
Marcuse, Herbert. 1972. Counterrevolution and Revolt. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Marcuse, Herbert. 1969. An Essay on Liberation. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Marcuse, Herbert. [1964] 1991. One-Dimensional Man. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Notes.
[1] Cuyler Dunn, “New DEI CRT definitions worry Kansas professors,” The Kansas City Star, July 17, 2026. 1A.
[2] Nicholas Confessore, “Antisemitism on Campus Lets Right Restart a Culture Battle,” The New York Times, December 11, 2023. A1.
[3] Theyaask religion devoted
[4] This last point, devaluing the potential moral and political power of class struggle, is of course an explicit and unexplained weakness of both Leo XIII’s and Leo XIV’s Social Doctrine of Christian social action, at least from the point of view of my own critical Marxism. Instead, Leo XIV describes a struggle between two sorts of love: “Saint Augustine described human history as a struggle between two loves, which give rise to two ways of inhabiting the world and living together — or two ‘cities,’ as it were: on the one hand, the love of God and neighbor; on the other, the exclusive love of self.” (130) I would be getting ahead of myself to develop the needed critique here, but will return to this at the conclusion of my otherwise quite positive review.
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