I have been working on this long series of the Caputo postmodern religious anthology Cross and Khora. Today, let’s begin with the holy atheist,

Have you ever wondered about all the potential mates you’ve had in your life why they thought you were great but didn’t love you back.  Clearly, you can’t will yourself to love someone, just as you can’t will yourself to believe in God.  Caputo notes the secularist’s prayer to receive the gift of belief one of the most pure,

The trace of this voice, incidentally, is also found, without the encumbrance of neoplatonic metaphysics, in someone like John of the Cross and other spiritual writers like Theresa of Lisieux, who write of a moment of absolute desolation or disconsolation, of a dark night in which they are thoroughly convinced, not that they speak out of the heart of divine truth, but that they no longer believe in God at all. In such moments, they are convinced that their prayers and religious practices are fraudulent and that their faith is an empty shell. In that moment, they believe that they no longer believe in God and so, precisely at that moment, they ask God, in whom they do not believe, to help their unbelief, which from my point of view represents the most radical movement of faith. At that point, they cannot pray, and that inability to pray, that precise state of being left without a prayer reduces them to prayer, a prayer to be able to pray, which for me is their most radical prayer. Their faith and their prayer become possible just in virtue of being impossible. At that point of extreme desertification and disconsolation, mystical life and prayer become more loyal to themselves, more loyal to their own apophaticism, more loyal to the things themselves, more loyal to the trace… [M]ystical theology can only confess or circumfess its sorry state, pray that there is some point to prayer, and hope against hope.  Zlomislic, Marko; DeRoo, Neal. Cross and Khôra: Deconstruction and Christianity in the Work of John D. Caputo (Postmodern Ethics Book 1) (pp. 172-173). Pickwick Publications, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Olthuis connects this to the notion of Khora I ended with last time:

 With khôra comes responsibility, risk, undecidability, and the need to live in the unknowing of faith. We further agree that khôra will always be with us, that we never get beyond it in this life. All phenomena are without question saturated with a certain undecidability, insinuated by a buzzing confusion, often shrouded in anonymity. It takes faith to believe that we live in a creation of a loving and caring God rather than in a vast cosmic stupidity, which neither knows nor cares that you and I are here. Faith is to see through a glass darkly; otherwise it would not be faith.  Zlomislic, Marko; DeRoo, Neal. Cross and Khôra: Deconstruction and Christianity in the Work of John D. Caputo (Postmodern Ethics Book 1) (p. 178). Pickwick Publications, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Caputo comments regarding Khora as Différance,

“Amorous” is what it is because of its differential spacing from the odious, or amorphous, or amortizing. Différance makes “hate” possible, too, the way it makes small red ants possible just when all along our hearts were set on large green birds… To be sure, Derrida thought this idea had legs. In his subsequent books he ran with the ball of this idea that he took from his encounter with structural linguistics and applied it in a more general way, beyond language in the strict sense, to institutions, politics, the non-literary arts, architecture, etc. In all these things, he argued in ever more felicitous ways, things get done in virtue of differential spacing conceived in an open-ended way, post-structurally.  Zlomislic, Marko; DeRoo, Neal. Cross and Khôra: Deconstruction and Christianity in the Work of John D. Caputo (Postmodern Ethics Book 1) (p. 190). Pickwick Publications, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Différance (note the unusual spelling with an “a”) is one of Jacques Derrida’s most famous and slippery ideas. It is a deliberate pun in French that combines two meanings of the verb différer:To differ (to be different, to be spatially or conceptually apart)

To defer (to postpone, to delay, to put off until later)

Derrida coins this neologism to show that meaning is never fully present, stable, or self-sufficient. Instead, meaning is produced through a double movement:

Difference: A word or concept only has meaning because it is not other words/concepts. It exists in a web of contrasts and oppositions.  I previously gave the example of the mansion as houseness incarnate, houseness merely present in the average house, and houseness deficient in the dilapidated shack.  As well, part of this matrix is the next person may find the mansion gawdy and the shack quaint.  Likewise, Niagara Falls may appear as a wonder of the world to a tourist but as background imagery or even noise pollution to a local resident 

Deferral: Meaning is never fully “there” in the present moment; it is always postponed, relying on an endless chain of references to other signs.

So différance is the active, productive movement of differing and deferring that makes language (and ultimately all meaning) possible.

2. Caputo’s Example: “Amorous”Caputo says:  “Amorous” is what it is because of its differential spacing from the odious, or amorphous, or amortizing.

This is a classic Derridean point: The word/concept “amorous” (loving, romantic) doesn’t have some pure, positive essence inside it.

It gains its identity only through its differences from nearby terms:odious (hateful, repulsive) — the emotional opposite

amorphous (shapeless, vague) — a different kind of negation

amortizing (gradually paying off a debt, “dying” financially) — playing on the shared root with “amour” but shifting it toward death/finitude

The meaning of “amorous” is generated by its spacing — its position in a differential network — rather than by pointing to some fixed, ideal “love” existing independently of language.

3. The Same Logic Applies to “Hate”Caputo continues:  Différance makes “hate” possible, too…

Just as “amorous” depends on not-being-hate (and many other things), “hate” itself only makes sense because of its differential relations to love, indifference, fondness, etc. There is no pure, self-contained “hate” any more than there is a pure “love.” Both are effects of the play of différance.

4. The Striking Analogy: Small Red Ants vs. Large Green BirdsCaputo writes:  “the way it makes small red ants possible just when all along our hearts were set on large green birds.”

This is a colorful, almost humorous way of making a deep point. Even something as seemingly “natural” or “positive” as large, beautiful green birds appearing is made possible by the same differential system that also allows annoying little red ants.

In other words:  The structure that produces meaning, identity, and presence always simultaneously produces otherness, absence, and the unwanted.

You cannot have the “desired” term (beautiful birds = love, presence, beauty) without the differential system that also makes the “undesired” term (tiny ants = hate, irritation, the mundane) possible.

Différance is indifferent to our preferences. It is a blind, productive force.

This undercuts any metaphysics of pure presence or pure positivity. Whatever we value is haunted by what it excludes or differs from.

5. From Language to Everything Else (Post-structuralism).  Caputo then notes that Derrida took this idea — originally inspired by structural linguistics (especially Saussure) — and generalized it far beyond language:

Institutions

Politics

Art

Architecture

Ethics

etc.

In each domain, Derrida argues that things only function, get their identity, or “get done” because of differential spacing understood in an open-ended, never-fully-stable way.  This is the move from structuralism (which tended to look for fixed underlying structures, binary oppositions, etc.) to post-structuralism:  Structures exist, but they are not closed, stable, or totalizable.

There is always play, slippage, openness, excess.

Meaning and institutions are never fully “present” or self-identical; they are constituted by what they defer and what they differ from.

Derrida “ran with the ball” of this idea because he saw its enormous power: it destabilizes any claim to absolute foundations, pure origins, or final meanings — whether in philosophy, politics, literature, or art.

John Caputo is explaining that, for Derrida:

Nothing simply is what it is on its own.

Everything (words, concepts, emotions, institutions) gets its identity through an endless system of differences and deferrals (différance).

This system is productive: it makes “love” possible, but it also necessarily makes “hate” possible. It can give you the beautiful green birds you wanted, but the same machinery will also produce the annoying red ants.

This isn’t just a point about language. Derrida applied it broadly to show how all human realities (politics, art, law, architecture…) work through this open, differential play rather than through fixed essences or stable centers.

The implication is radical: there is no pure, self-present meaning or identity anywhere. Everything is relational, provisional, and haunted by what it is not. That’s why Derrida thought différance had “legs” — it could run through almost every field of thought.

Caputo comments

One of the features or attributes of différance is undecidability. That is, outside of purely formal languages—and even there, as Gödel showed (that is the source from which Derrida adapted the idea of formal undecidability) one runs into trouble—there is no clean way to keep one idea clear of another. Literal names turn out to be metaphoric ones; things like “pharmakon” and “hymen” and “supplement” tend to mean opposite things at once; attempts to sneak about around signifiers to catch sight of the signifieds end up with just more signifiers. And so on. We have no direct access to the things themselves.  Zlomislic, Marko; DeRoo, Neal. Cross and Khôra: Deconstruction and Christianity in the Work of John D. Caputo (Postmodern Ethics Book 1) (p. 191). Pickwick Publications, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Previously I mentioned the idea of justice and how we might be going along with our guiding perspective (ousia) of the traditional definition of marriage when we are amazed (thaumazein) at the damage it does to LGBTQ+ rights and can’t appropriate (epekeine tes ousias) them, and we are called (idea tou agathou) to deconstruct our guiding perspective and reconstruct it in a more just way (which may have unforeseen harms).   This is Heidegger’s reading of Plato’s allegory of the cave in the Republic.  Justice is not simply a present definition but an ideal in process that may in fact be two steps back as we try to actualize it.

The main topic of Plato’s Republic is justice.

The dialogue opens with the explicit question “What is justice?” (or dikaiosyne in Greek) and spends its ten books pursuing two closely related inquiries: What is justice? — both in the individual soul and in the city-state (polis).

Is the just life happier/better/more advantageous than the unjust life?

How Plato Structures the Argument Around Justice

Book 1: Socrates debates several conventional definitions of justice (e.g., Cephalus: telling the truth and paying debts; Polemarchus: helping friends and harming enemies; Thrasymachus: “justice is the advantage of the stronger”). Socrates refutes them but doesn’t yet give his own positive account.

Books 2–4: Glaucon and Adeimantus challenge Socrates to defend justice for its own sake (not just for reputation or rewards). To answer this, Socrates proposes building an ideal city “in speech” (the Kallipolis) as a larger model. He argues that justice in the city is each class (rulers, guardians, producers) performing its own proper function without interfering in others’ roles. He then maps this onto the individual soul, which has three parts (reason, spirit, appetite). Justice in the soul is the harmonious ordering where reason rules, spirit supports it, and appetite is moderated.

Later books expand into many famous topics — the philosopher-king, the Allegory of the Cave, the theory of Forms, the critique of poetry and democracy, the education of guardians, the role of women, etc. — but these are all in service of understanding justice and showing why the just person (and just city) is truly happy and well-ordered.

In short, Plato uses the construction of the ideal state, the nature of the soul, epistemology, metaphysics, and education as tools to illuminate what justice really is and why it is worth choosing even when it appears to bring personal disadvantage.

Some readers note that the Republic is also fundamentally about the ideal state and the nature of the good life. That’s true, but Plato presents the ideal state primarily as an analogy to make the concept of justice clearer on a larger scale (“the city is the soul writ large”). The overarching dramatic question that frames everything remains justice and whether it benefits the person who possesses it.

Justice is the central theme of Plato’s Republic. Almost everything else in the dialogue (politics, psychology, metaphysics, education) serves to answer the questions: “What is justice?” and “Why should we be just?”

Here’s a clear explanation of how justice connects to the Allegory of the Cave in Plato’s Republic.

Quick Recap of the Allegory (Book 7)

Prisoners are chained inside a dark cave from birth. They face a blank wall and can only see shadows cast by puppets (carried by unseen puppeteers) behind them, illuminated by a fire. They mistake these shadows for reality and even compete to predict which shadow will appear next, gaining “honors” for their cleverness.

One prisoner is freed, dragged up the steep path out of the cave, and forced to see:

The puppets (more real than shadows)

The fire (the source of the light inside the cave)

Eventually, the outside world in sunlight — real trees, animals, and finally the Sun itself.

The sunlight blinds him at first, but gradually he sees clearly. The Sun represents the Form of the Good, the highest reality that makes all knowledge and truth possible. If he returns to the cave to free the others, they mock him, think he’s gone mad, and might even try to kill him.

The Allegory is not a random story about knowledge. Plato places it right after he has defined justice in the city and the soul (Books 2–4) and while he is explaining the education needed for the ideal rulers (philosopher-kings). The connection is profound on several levels: 

Justice Requires Knowledge of Reality, Not Appearances

Most people (including the prisoners) live in the realm of doxa (opinion) — they argue about “shadows of justice.”

In the allegory, Socrates explicitly says the prisoners dispute about “the shadows of justice” or the objects that cast those shadows (517d). They debate conventional, superficial ideas of justice (like the ones Cephalus, Polemarchus, and Thrasymachus offered in Book 1), but they have never seen Justice itself — the true Form of Justice.

True justice is not a social convention or power play; it is an objective reality that exists in the intelligible world of Forms.

The Form of the Good Makes Justice Possible

Just as the Sun illuminates everything in the visible world and makes sight possible, the Form of the Good illuminates the intelligible world and makes truth, knowledge, and all virtues (including justice) possible and beneficial.

Plato says: the Form of the Good is what makes “just things and other virtuous things” useful and beneficial. Without grasping the Good, you cannot truly understand or practice justice.

Justice in the Soul = Proper Ordering Through Knowledge

Recall Plato’s definition of justice in the individual: each part of the soul (reason, spirit, appetite) does its own work, with reason ruling.

The Allegory shows what it takes for reason to rule properly: the soul must be turned around (converted) from the shadowy world of appearances toward the light of truth. Philosophical education is this painful “turning of the soul.” Only the person who has seen the Good (and thus true Justice) can achieve genuine inner harmony and justice.

Justice in the City Requires Philosopher-Rulers

The ideal city is just when the wisest (those who have left the cave and seen reality) rule. The allegory explains why philosophers must rule and why it is so difficult:  They are reluctant to return to political life (the cave). 

Ordinary people resist them and prefer their comfortable illusions.

This justifies Plato’s controversial claim that only those educated in dialectic and who have contemplated the Forms (especially the Good) are truly equipped to create and maintain a just society. Without this higher knowledge, rulers will govern based on shadows — false opinions about justice — leading to injustice.

Shadows = Conventional, mistaken opinions about justice (what most people, including sophists and politicians, argue over).

Escape and ascent = Philosophical education and the pursuit of true knowledge.

Seeing the Sun (Form of the Good) = Grasping the ultimate source that gives justice its real value and makes it worth choosing for its own sake.

Returning to the cave = The philosopher’s duty to bring justice to the city, even at personal cost (this echoes Socrates’ own life and trial).

In essence, the Allegory of the Cave illustrates why justice cannot be fully understood or reliably practiced without philosophy. Justice is not merely following laws or getting what you want; it is aligning the soul and the city with the true, objective order of reality — an order illuminated by the Form of the Good.  This is why the Republic moves from debating popular ideas of justice → defining justice structurally → showing (via the Cave) the metaphysical foundation that makes that definition possible.  We do not invent subjective justice for ourselves during metanoia such as enduring an animal cruelty video that inspires metanoia and veganism, but more fully uncover what justice is and always was.

Like looking into the sun, we don’t see justice directly, but as a call to rethink our guiding perspective in a more just way – however circular such a characterization is.   Aristotle uses the language of “touching” (thigein or thigganein) for a direct, non-discursive mode of intellectual apprehension (noesis), particularly for simple essences or indivisible objects where ordinary propositional language and combination/separation do not apply in the usual way. It does involve ideas or truths that resist full capture by discursive reasoning (dianoia or logos as assertion) and instead require a kind of immediate contact or intuition.  In the case of Justice/Injustice, Plato’s allegory is a vehicle for the listener to undergo the process of: everyday guiding perspective -> injustice -> deconstructing the guiding perspective and working to attempt at reconstructing it with less injustice.  Justice is a paradigmatic example, but all philosophy proceeds as something beyond ousia/Being (e.g., LGBTQ+ rights trampled by the traditional definition of marriage) causing wonder and rethinking what you once held most dearly and operated according to.  Being or ousia originally meant property, the spere you operate in and is closest to you.