Moral re-turns in geography. Chora: On ethics as an image

This paper focuses on the geographical notion of chora, i.e. the earth as ethically shaped by human practices, according to my interpretation of Strabo’s Geography. I argue that this chora is bearer of a logic of the included third/middle, as it coincides with the logico-semantic third way of Plato’s notion of image. Re-interpreting today’s geographical turns in the light of a re-turn to Strabo’s chora/image, I argue that this return is moral, inasmuch as the geographical chora shows that ethics has preserved a logic of image and representation, which is the most ancient in Western thought, but also the most appropriate to contemporary issues. The geographical model of chora which I delineate here – a complex model on the basis of which ethics works in the same way as an image – is also the attempt to propose an alternative theory on the nature of image as well as an alternative interpretation of the role which ethics can play in current debate.