Derrida says Philosophical thinking is usually thought as taking up a guiding thread in a text  (e.g., negative theology) provisionally, and seeing what we can do with it (Sauf le nom, 62).  It concludes by going “back, then once more, briefly, to the beginning, and rapidly trace the steps that led us to the point from which we have now reached the same position once more; and then attempt to crown our story with a completion fitting all that had gone before (Derrida, Khora, 127):”  as though all the confusions, hypotheses, false starts, guess and check, etc were never real in relation to the finished product. 

Rhetoric is built on the foundation of the difference between sensible and intelligible, but Derrida say Khora “is neither sensible nor intelligible, belongs to a third genus.  One cannot even say of it that it is neither this nor that, nor both this and that (Derrida, Khora, 89),” since it is prior to the distinction between Being and beings, making the distinction possible e.g., making possible apophansis: “something as something else (the dog as brown, as it is in itself, etc).”  Khora precedes the paradigm/intelligible/immutable (Khora 90).  Khora is not mythos like the Phaedrus organicist motif of a well composed logos must look like a living body (Derrida, Khora, 127), but prior to and “gives place” to the distinction between logos and mythos with a third, allegory.   Khora has no essence, and so “is” not, and so like the God of negative theology is a sur-name rather than a proper name (126): word/concept; word-concept/thing; meaning/reference; signification/value (K, 96) are preceded by Khora. 

We sense Khora when we are called to importance in Plato’s text and cite it without really knowing what it means and how to determine it (Derrida, Khora, 97).”  We might thus have a heavily researched essay on Derrida that recapitulates his key terms without really understanding them.  Commentaries are authoritarian.  When I translate Paul in the New Testament I write a program for how to read Paul and how not to read Paul. 

Socrates is not Khora but like Khora as a receptive addressee or receptacle of all that is to be inscribed.  She is an intermediary, a third gender.  She is behind and below the opposition of the paradigm and its copy. (Derrida, Khora, 124-5). 

In his lecture course On the Essence of Truth Heidegger relates “allegory” to “sense image” linguistically, but it’s also interesting “allegory” means “speaking otherwise” because this relates not only to the figurative but also to apophansis and Plato’s Sophist and the idea that to encounter something we need to take it “as something else,” e.g., the dog “as brown;” “as it is in itself;” “as short,” etc.  Khora seems to be this third place where logos/mythos; intelligible/sensible, etc can come together in opposition (eg Plato on justice vs inequity) in this place of otherness (e.g., logos and mythos come into opposition and stand forth in allegory).  Similarly, the intelligible (houseness) is “present” in the (sensible) house in the threefoldeness that the mansion is houseness incarnate, houseness is merely present in the average house, and deficient in the dilapidated shack, though the next person might find the mansion gawdy and the shack quaint.  Likewise, Niagara Falls may appear “as” a wonder of the world to a tourist, and as noise pollution to the local resident.  Homer says the gods don’t appear to everyone enargeis speaking of Odysseus who is in the full presence of the goddess while his companion doesn’t see the woman in this way. 

Heidegger notes Plato sees this as appearing in various degrees of Beauty, and so beauty is this radical otherness that is not just the beauty of a woman, or a landscape, or a brilliant argument, but deficient/merely present/incarnate that allows Being (in this case houseness) to stand forth.  Protagoras said man is the measure of all things, so invoking our 3 terms a right triangle is beginning to appear to a child learning her shapes, appears more fully to a student learning the Pythagorean theorem, and in its fullness to a geometry professor.  Beings are thus connected by a 3 fold logos/language (e.g., positive, comparative, superlative).  Leibniz thus shows a sufficient reason does not prevent a being from falling into nothing but completes it: perfectio: To be means to stand in relation to a ground.   

Heidegger’s 1931–32 lecture course On the Essence of Truth (which expands on his 1930 essay of the same name), where he interrogates truth not as correspondence (adaequatio) but as aletheia—unconcealment or the event of bringing-forth from hiddenness. Here, Heidegger turns to Plato’s allegory of the cave (Republic VII) as a pivotal site for this shift: the cave isn’t just a metaphor for illusion vs. enlightenment but a dramatic staging of how truth emerges through struggle (polemos) against concealment. The prisoners’ shadows represent semblance (doxa, opinion as disguised appearance), while the ascent reveals degrees of unconcealment— from the fire’s flickering light to the sun’s full radiance.  In his Nietzsche lectures (contemporary with these), Heidegger explores how Platonic beauty (kalon) involves a “sensible shining” or radiant appearance that both veils and reveals the eidos (Form).

Beauty, for Heidegger reading Plato (e.g., Phaedrus 250d), is the “most radiant” (ekphanestaton) in the sensible realm, a “sense image” (Sinn-Bild) that sparkles as an intermediary—neither pure Form nor mere matter, but a disclosive glimmer that “speaks otherwise” by pointing beyond itself.

This “otherwise” echoes allegory’s etymology: it discloses truth apophatically, through what it’s not, much like the cave’s shadows “speak” of the real by their deficiency.

This ties seamlessly to Plato’s Sophist (which Heidegger often pairs with the cave allegory), where apophansis (assertion or showing-forth in speech) involves predication as “saying something as something” (e.g., “the dog as brown”). Logos here isn’t neutral description but a participatory act of encounter: to speak of a thing is to take it “as” other than its isolated self, weaving it into the fabric of being and non-being (the Stranger’s dialectic on the “other,” heteron). Heidegger amplifies this in Being and Time (§33) as the “as-structure” of interpretation—our primordial way of understanding, where beings show up “as” equipmental, deficient, or exemplary. Our example of the dog “as brown,” “as it is in itself,” or “as short” captures this: the “as” introduces otherness, allowing the thing to stand forth (ek-sist) in its truth, not as static essence but as relational disclosure.

In the Timaeus, khora is the “third kind” (triton genos)—neither intelligible Form nor sensible copy, but the receptive space (hypodoche) that “gives place” to their opposition and intermingling. Heidegger, in texts like Introduction to Metaphysics, sees this as prefiguring the Greek sense of physis (emergence) as a strife between concealment and unconcealment, where opposites like logos/mythos or intelligible/sensible “come together” not in synthesis but in dynamic tension.

In our framing, khora becomes the allegorical site where such binaries stand forth: logos (rational assertion) and mythos (narrative veiling) oppose yet relate, allowing truth to emerge. Plato’s justice (dikaiosyne) vs. inequity exemplifies this—justice isn’t a fixed Form but discloses itself through deficient instantiations (e.g., the unjust city in Republic II), much like our house triad: the mansion as “houseness incarnate” (full presence), the average house as “merely present” (adequate but unremarkable), and the shack as “deficient” (lacking, yet perhaps quaint to another).

The “houseness” (the Being of the house) isn’t a transcendent essence but withdraws and reveals itself differentially, through the “as” of perception. Similarly, Niagara Falls “as” wonder (to the tourist) or “as” noise (to the resident) highlights how disclosure is perspectival, attuned to Dasein’s mood (Stimmung)—beauty or annoyance emerges from the same phenomenon, mediated by otherness.

With Homeric “Enargeis” and Degrees of Appearance in the Odyssey (16.161), Athena appears to Odysseus in her full divine presence (enargeis, “clearly” or “manifestly”), but to his companion, she remains hidden or disguised as a mortal woman. Homer’s line—”the gods do not show themselves enargeis to everyone”—underscores that divine disclosure is selective, tied to the perceiver’s attunement. Odysseus, the wily hero, “sees” the goddess as she is because he’s open to the extraordinary; his companion encounters her “as” ordinary. This prefigures Platonic degrees: the gods (like Forms) appear in gradations, from veiled semblance to radiant truth.

Heidegger draws on this in his Plato interpretations, noting that beauty (kalon) is the paradigm of such graded unconcealment—it’s “what shines forth most purely” in the sensible, reminding us of the eide while belonging to appearance (doxa).

Beauty isn’t confined to a woman, landscape, or brilliant argument but operates across degrees: deficient (the gaudy mansion as excessive, hiding true form), present (the average as functional but uninspiring), incarnate (the shack as quaint, fully embodying simplicity). This “radical otherness” allows Being to “stand forth”—not as static presence but as phainesthai (appearing), where the “as” of allegory bridges the sensible/intelligible divide. For Heidegger, this is the essence of art and poetry: they preserve this strife, letting beings emerge in their truth without reducing them to objects.

The synthesis here—allegory as the “speaking otherwise,” apophansis, khora as the place of oppositional gathering, and beauty as the disclosive otherness—beautifully captures how encounter is always participatory, never neutral. It demands we “take” the world as other, in its degrees of radiance and deficiency.

Khora is a place of otherness where oppositions first truly come to be set off from and connected to one another.  With the intelligible the idea/exemplar/example come to be what they are apophantically, something “as” something else.  Muthos and logos fully come to stand as what they are in the play of figurative and philosophical in allegory.  Philosophical thought depends on aporia for direction.  I go along with the average, everyday disposition of marriage until there is a sudden block in the path (aporia) that we can’t appropriate (epekeina tes ousias, that which is beyond being and nothing), that the traditional definition of marriage tramples LGBTQ+ rights, and so prompted by wonder (thaumazein) we must deconstruct our disposition and reconstruct it in a more inclusive way (supposing the marriage event calls to you in this way).

Greek thought takes place in an arena of otherness, such as apophansis (something as something else), allegory (allēgoria, speaking otherwise), aporia (block in path), and Beauty (mediating sensible and intelligible).  Similarly, can see political narratives illustrated with examples and analogies mediated by conservative/liberal bias, etc, like a lawyer whose argument is not aimed at the truth but by making the best case possible for his client and presenting it as confidently as possible.  Likewise, a translation or commentary on Paul tries to persuade you how to read Paul and how not to read Paul.

A third is required to bring sense.  Consider this observation of Schelling: In morality, the opposite of Good is Bad.  Or is it Evil?  Evil is a religious concept and so doesn’t belong to morality, right?  Bad is a shifting word that applies just as well to people as it does to food.  It is helpful to bring in a third element, capacity, to resolve the problem.  It is our capacity for evil that is uniquely human morality, in that only humans can sink below brute animals in terms of depravity. Nothing about analyzing man in himself notes this freedom, but only comparing and contrasting man with other animals. Or, as Kant notes, a threefold positive (physical change of ball hits ball), comparatively greater (boiling water temporarily changes form), and superlative (cooked egg can’t be uncooked) irreversibility reflects how we experience the world but does not come from sense (since sense gives this, then this, then this – not irreversibility). The understanding supplies a rule that allows us to encounter events “as causal.”

This concludes my blog posts on Derrida’s essay Khora. Next time I will begin my last Derrida series on his book Aporias.