The Human Question

These days I've been listening to lectures from the Teaching Company on Wittgenstein, Quine, Habermas, etc. I have gathered the following: that our starting point for understanding the nature of language should be the starting point for how to "do" language: which is commands, requests, rather than pointing and naming. Language is most primitively about how to act...together. It presupposes a common activity toward a common goal. But what about the command of the superior to the inferior (as in parent/child and master/slave)? Well, I don't know about the latter, but the former requires empathy and a common goal. That common goal is not the private having of a thing by each of the communicators: it is a living and acting together. It might itself be communicative in nature. So in that case, there would be a kind of circularity in what I am saying. Language is a giving directions about how to act together (somewhat instrumentally or quasi-instrumentally) in or...