The Child (Infans)

Leon Niemoczynski

According to Meillassouxs ontology described in his theorization of the fourth

World of justice, the Child can be interpreted to be the birth of an infant that
symbolizes the rebirth of humanity. Meillassouxs descriptions of the literal birth
of the infans are vague, however according to LInexistence Divine the birth of
the child marks a key moment in the messianic eschatology (or eschaology" as
coined in Immanence of the World Beyond) indicating a knitting together of
Greek reason and Judeo-Christian faith with hope in the contingent conditions of
surchaos that enable future change.

Meillassoux states that the child represents the God to come present in all of
humanitys womb. This is to say that humanity can be pregnant with hope for a
future to come, to see the birth of a new World just as in the past conditions have
given birth to Worlds of life, matter, and thought. Thus, the infans represents a
spirit of expectation making each human a forerunner of God.

According even to Meillassoux, there will always be some ambiguity regarding

the birth of the child during, before, or after the advent of the fourth World of
justice. This is due to the subordination of humans to the becoming on which
our fate depends, a fate that is bound to the amoral power of the surcontingent
which covers the predictability of any symbolic birth that is to happen.
Regardless of the unpredictability of this symbolic gesture made by the birth of
the child, Meillassoux ventures that it is a requirement in the advent of the
incarnation of universal justice.

The child, or infans in Latin, suggests for Meillassoux the unborn child or one
who does not speak. This symbolization assures the impossibility of any
specific religious vision for the advent of the fourth World. The child is the one
who teaches us that its power is not the manifestation of a superior power of
providence, but of contingency alone. The child teaches others that power is not
had as a transcendent power in its own right, but is solely an immanent end to
which power gives rise. The child also teaches humanity the impossibility of
despising ourselves with respect to what makes us human1.thus it cannot be
loved as Lord but1as one who knows itself to be equal. It is part of the divine
gesture that has made itself human among humans. In short, the child
represents the supreme abandonment of power during the time in which a
Christlike Messianic figure, a mediator, assumes the power of rebirth,
inaugurates a process of bodily resurrection so that justice can be brought about
for the dead, and relinquishes power once justice is accomplished for which the
advent was this events founding condition.