A child’s face moves us because it affirms transcendence as a project

Evidence

If, in all oppressed countries, a child’s face is so moving, it is not that the child is more moving or that he has more of a right to happiness than the others: it is that he is the living affirmation of human transcendence: he is on the watch, he is an eager hand held out to the world, he is a hope, a project. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 103

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: The child’s face as living transcendence is the same hope-image that recurs in Beauvoir’s account of why the oppressor’s lie is exposed — their smile projects a future the system denies.