The Stream of Human Dignity and its Relational/Generative Ecology: Biblical Past, Human Rights, Planetary Future

Abstract This essay proposes a reading of human dignity from an agentive/generative perspective. Its biblical roots and general anthropological significance are both probed. Two lines of research are specifically developed. The first concerns the biblical roots of cosmosemiosis (with particular reference to the story of Noah) and the related assumptions for a processive approach to meaning. The second analyzes the proactive and enactive features of the relationship between human beings and the environment observed from an anthropological and ecological perspective. The essay also presents an analysis of the semantic and pragmatic projections of agentive-generative dignity, examining its potential as an interface of intercultural and interspatial translation between legal systems that presuppose human dignity for their own legitimacy. This interpretation of interjuridical translation is applied to the relationship between legal systems on a planetary background molded by the prospective interpenetration of human rights and ecological challenges.