“Antoine Meillet also noted that imperatives in European languages are typically the morphological root of the verb, and hypothesised that the imperative was the primitive form of a verb: “walk!” precedes “to walk” or “he walks”. This opens up the possibility of an alternative ontology, or pre-ontology, based on commandment rather than assertion, on “be!” rather than “is”. While philosophical or scientific statements would fall under the ordinary “is”-based ontology, fields like law, religion or magic would operate in the imperative mode: “let there be…””

—  Giorgio Agamben

Giorgio Agamben, "What is a commandment?" http://bat020.com/2011/03/30/giorgio-agamben-what-is-a-commandment/ March 28, 2011

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Giorgio Agamben 6
Italian philosopher 1942

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