![]() Since Teubner explicitly asked the respondents to take this article – which to some extent overlaps with the paper at hand – into account when discussing his paper, I will refer to it occasionally. Human Rights Violations by ‘Private’ Transnational Actors,” The Modern Law Review (2006): 327-47, 336. The origin of alienation lies in the very first communication.’ 4 x Gunther Teubner, “The Anonymous Matrix. It marks the transition from a communication-free world to a world of communication: ‘The original Fall of Man happens at the Tree of Knowledge: the meaning-producing force of communication, with its ability to distinguish good and evil, destroys the original unity of man and nature, makes man god-like and leads to the loss of Paradise. ![]() The first phase is located in the paradisiacal state of nature, before Babel so to speak, in which man and nature were one. How could this happen? Teubner discerns two phases in the downfall of man. Our world has fallen apart into many different languages, and each language constitutes a foreign language to the other. can be read as a way of dealing with the world after Babel. Teubner’s plea for a ‘common law constitution’ 3 x This notion is taken from Hurrell and is cited approvingly in Gunther Teubner, “Transnational Fundamental Rights: Horizontal Effect?”, in this volume, 198. However, he does not give any explanation for this divine punishment. Une archéologie des sciences humaines (Paris: Gallimard 1966), 51, points out that as a result the original unity between words and things was destroyed. Peggy Kamuf (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), 243-53, its destruction put an end to the imperialistic aspirations of the Semitic family to establish its empire and spread its language (see also note 36). ![]() According to Jacques Derrida, “From ‘Des Tours de Babel’,” in: A Derrida Reader. See Michael Oakeshott, “The Tower of Babel,” in: On History and Other Essays (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1999), 179-210. 2 x In Oakeshott’s reading of the myth, for instance, the Tower of Babel represents the vain effort to turn the state into an enterprise by compelling people to pursue one and the same goal. ![]() It became a symbol of human arrogance or hybris, although opinions differ on the exact nature of the sins committed by man. The city was named, as is commonly known, ‘Babel’ (which originally meant freedom, but after its breakdown it signified confusion). The people stopped building the tower, left the city and spread all over the earth. He seemed to fear the power of one people united by one language: ‘Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.’ Therefore, he decided to ‘confound their language’, so ‘that they may not understand one another’s speech’. However, the Lord was not pleased with their efforts to ‘make a name’ for themselves. ‘And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.’ Instead of each one going his own way, people stuck together and founded a city in which they started building a tower ‘whose top may reach unto heaven’. the descendents of Noah were forced to disperse over the face of the earth. After the Flood, as is said in the Bible, 1 x The following quotations are taken from Genesis 11:1-9 in the translation of the King James Bible.
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