metaphysics
The Receptacle (Khora)
χώρα
Not Form, not copy, but the dark womb in which all things appear — space itself, the nurse of becoming that takes every shape and is none.
When Plato tried to explain how the eternal Forms cast their fleeting images into the visible world, he found he needed a third thing beyond model and copy: a placeless place in which appearances arise and pass away. He called it the Receptacle, or khora — a "nurse of all becoming" that, like a mass of gold endlessly remolded, takes on every quality yet has none of its own. Later thinkers, above all Aristotle, would seize on this elusive idea and recast it as matter or space, debates that still echo in physics and philosophy today.
Where this idea shows up
2 Greek sources·1 Jewish-canon citationWhere to read it
- Plutarch· Chaeronea
- Guide for the Perplexed1190 CE