I start from three interlocking premises. First, affective states and passions are an inherent dimension of politics and the political realm. Second, among the “ineluctable means” of politics, in addition to violence and deception as identified by Max Weber, is the power of rhetoric to arouse and dampen emotions, rhetoric in the double sense of the art of persuasion and the art of figuration. And, third, passions and affects do not exist independent of “discourse,” specifically rhetoric, in the sense that rhetoric does not simply convey or express passions and affects but in some sense forms them.
The place of rhetoric in political theory is, therefore, inextricably bound up with the philosophy of the passions….
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