File spoon-archives/heidegger.archive/heidegger_1998/heidegger.9807, message 182


Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1998 18:01:19 +0200
Subject: Re:  Chora=Place?
From: artefact-AT-t-online.de (Michael Eldred)


Cologne, 24 July 1998

Stuart Elden schrieb:
> Hans,
>
> The reference you are looking for is Einfuehrung in die Metaphysik, GA40,
> p71; An Introduction to Metaphysics, p66.
>
> H says:- "The Greeks had no word for 'space' [Raum]. This is no accident;
> for they experience the spatial on the basis not of extension but of place
> [Ort] (topos); they experienced it as chora, which signifies neither place
> nor space but that which is occupied by what stands there". The shift from
> topos and chora to a 'space' defined by extension is initiated by Platonic
> philosophy, because of its interpretation of being as idea.
>
> Chora seems to be one of those Greek words that H neither translates nor
> transliterates. It "abstracts from every particular... and in such a way
> precisely admits and 'makes place' [Platz macht] for something else" (ibid)
>
> The use of Ort is very important in the later Heidegger, but to my
> knowledge he doesn't return to chora again, except in Was heisst Denken?,
> p174-5; What is Called Thinking?, p227 when he links it to khorismos and it
> designates the gap between being and beings.
>
> You should look at Jacques Derrida, Khora, Editions Gallilee, 1993; "Khora",
> in On the Name, Stanford UP, 1995.
_____________
> Can be found in GA55 (p 335 f.).
>
> Kindest regards,
> Henk


To supplement these useful references: Passow’s “Griechisches Woerterbuch” has 
three long columns under “chôra” with many references to ancient texts. The 
first signification is: “1) A piece of earth or land surrounding and belonging 
to a collectivity or a single person or thing and therefore already 
distinguished from _topos_ by the Stoics.” There follows a long quotation from 
Sext. Emp. 149,26 “2) the space or piece of land which comprises a certain 
number of people, the landscape, region, country...” and “3) also the piece of 
earth or land which an individual occupies with his body, i.e. place, position, 
... and so also of things...”

The related verb is _chôreô_, whose first meaning is given as “1) raeumen (make 
space), change place a) by making space, giving way ... b) by changing the 
surroundings by leaving a place...”

So Heidegger’s phenomenological interpretation of _chôra_ is hardly 
controversial.

Regards,
Michael
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