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.

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This paper aims to highlight some peculiarities of the semiotic square, whose creation is due in particular to Greimas' works. The starting point is the semiotic notion of complex term, which I regard as one of the main differences between Greimas' square and Blanché's hexagon. The remarks on the complex terms make room for a historical survey in Aristotle's texts, where one can find the philosophical roots of the idea of middle term between two contraries and its relation to notions such as difference, position and motion. In the Stagirite's non-logical works, the theory of the intermediate, or middle term, represents an important link between opposition issues and ethics: this becomes a privileged perspective from which to reconsider the semiotic use of the square, i.e., its inclusion in the semio-narrative structures articulating the sense of texts. Mathematics Subject Classification (2000). Primary 91F20; Secondary 03B65.

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Th e notion of 'symbol' in Eriugena's writing is far from clear. It has an ambiguous semantic connection with other terms such as 'signifi cation', 'fi gure', 'allegory', 'veil', 'agalma', 'form', 'shadow', 'mystery' and so on. Th is paper aims to explore into the origins of such a semantic ambiguity, already present in the texts of the pseudo-Dionysian corpus which Eriugena translated and commented upon. In the probable Neoplatonic sources of this corpus, the Greek term symbolon shares some aspects of its meaning with other words inherited from the ancient tradition, such as synthēma, eikōn, homoiotēs. Some of them, such as eikōn and homoiotēs, belong to the fi eld of images and are associated with linguistic semantics in the Neoplatonic commentaries not only to Plato but also to Aristotle's logical works. Among the late ancient Neoplatonists, particular attention is paid to Proclus and to his use of the term agalma. In fact, the textual history of this word seems to be a privileged perspective from which to reconstruct the Neoplatonic semantic blending of symbol and image, as well as the main role played by linguistic issues in this confl ation.