ABSTRACT
The giving of a command to someone – like making an assertion to him – is an historical human transaction that takes place in time, and involves a specific and concrete context of person, place, and occasion. The recipient of a command may be either a single individual or the individuals of some group. In extraordinary cases it becomes necessary not only to discriminate between the intended and the actual recipient of a command – it being obviously possible to misaddress a command – but one must also recognize that a command may be addressed to what the source believed mistakenly a genuine target. The pivotal component of a command is its mooted action or result – the possible process of activity or state of affairs which the source enjoins the target to do or achieve or to refrain from doing or achieving.
