  We study 2+1 Chern-Simons gravity at the classical action level. In
particular we rederive the linear combinations of the ``standard'' and
``exotic'' Einstein actions, from the (anti) self-duality of the ``internal''
Lorentzian indices. The relation to a genuine four-dimensional (anti)self-dual
topological theory greatly facilitates the analysis and its relation to
hyperbolic three-dimensional geometry. Finally a non-abelian vector field
``dual'' action is also obtained.
