I want to begin with a startling proposition that challenges everything we assume about human nature: the modern human being—the person sitting in this room right now—is a recent invention. When Michel Foucault made this observation, he wasn't speaking metaphorically. The human being who believes in democracy, who recognises gender equality as a moral imperative, who feels genuine concern for the environment—this person would be virtually unrecognisable to most humans who have ever lived on this planet.
Supporting PDF: Man is a recent invention PDF
Cast your mind back to 1789. The French Revolution didn't just overthrow a government—it overthrew an entire understanding of what it means to be human. For millennia, human societies had been organised around the assumption that some people were born to rule and others to serve. Kings ruled by divine right. Nobility inherited power through blood. Clergy mediated between heaven and earth through institutional authority. Then, in a moment that still reverberates through history, ordinary people declared three revolutionary words: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. These weren't just political slogans—they were anthropological claims. They asserted that every human being possessed inherent dignity, that this dignity was equal across all people, and that we were bound together not by hierarchy but by kinship. France became a democracy. Then many other countries followed. But more than governments changed—humanity itself was being reinvented.
Today, we don't just live in democracies—we think democratically. The modern human being has internalised democratic consciousness. We instinctively question authority. We expect our voices to be heard. We assume that power must be justified, not simply imposed. But this democratic thinking brings both promise and peril. We've witnessed how democracy can devolve into majoritarianism, how it can be manipulated by populism, how the voice of the people can become the tyranny of the majority.
The challenge of our time is to think democratically while thinking beyond simple democracy. We need what we might call "democratic wisdom"—the ability to hold together majority rule with constitutional protections, popular will with Gospel values, the voice of the many with the rights of the few. This means embracing inclusivity as a democratic virtue. It means protecting minority rights not despite democracy but because of it. It means practicing synodality—the ancient Christian art of walking together—as a democratic spiritual discipline.
Modern humanity has invented something unprecedented: the expectation that ordinary people should stand up, speak up, and ask questions. We take this for granted, but it represents a radical break with most of human history. For centuries, questioning authority was not just discouraged—it was literally unthinkable for most people. Today, we consider it a human right and a civic duty.
Gender and Dignity
Modern humanity, in principle, recognises gender equality, but this remains our most unfinished revolution. A short woman among tall people is doubly short; and embarrassed already too. This captures something profound about how oppression compounds itself. When we already live in systems that diminish certain people, any additional disadvantage becomes magnified. The woman who faces both gender bias and other forms of marginalisation experiences not just double difficulty but exponential vulnerability.
The language we use matters profoundly. Notice the difference between saying "20 women were abused" and naming "20 men have abused women." The passive voice obscures agency and responsibility. The active voice demands accountability.
Respecting women is not a progressive add-on to human dignity—it's a test of whether we've truly understood what modern humanity means. If we've invented the human being as someone with inherent worth and equal dignity, then gender equality isn't optional—it's definitional.
The Earth as Our Home
Perhaps the most recent aspect of modern humanity's invention is environmental consciousness. Care for the earth represents the latest expansion of our moral imagination. The story of climate change is not a new one, yet on moral grounds one can't stop saying it again, and again, and yet again, like daily prayers. This repetition isn't futile—it's formative. Just as daily prayer shapes the prayer, constantly returning to environmental concerns shapes us into the kind of humans who consider the earth worthy of care. But here's the challenge: Understanding it is not equal to realising it. We can know about climate change without truly grasping what it means. We can accept the science without allowing it to transform how we live.
Karl Marx's prophecy points toward humanity's next invention: "Individual private ownership of the earth (land) will appear just as much in bad taste as the ownership of one human being by another." Marx was suggesting that future humans will look back on private land ownership the way we look back on slavery—as a moral absurdity that once seemed natural and necessary. Whether or not you agree with Marx's economic analysis, his observation points to something crucial: modern humanity is still being invented. The moral intuitions that seem obvious to us today—democracy, equality, environmental concern—would have seemed radical or impossible to previous generations.
The most startling realisation is this: we are not finished products. Modern humanity is not a completed project but an ongoing invention. The democratic, egalitarian, environmentally conscious human being is still emerging. Every time someone stands up for justice, speaks truth to power, or extends care beyond their immediate tribe, they're participating in humanity's continuing invention. Every time someone chooses inclusion over exclusion, protection over exploitation, collaboration over domination, they're helping to create what the human being is becoming.
We are both the inventors and the invention. We are both the artists and the artwork. We are both the authors and the characters in the story of what humanity might become. The human being who can vote, who believes in gender equality, who feels genuine concern for the earth's wellbeing—this person is historically unprecedented. You are the inheritors of revolutions you didn't start and the architects of revolutions not yet finished.
From the Keynote given at FRISM 2025.
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