ABSTRACT
The overlap between Aristotelian rhetoric and Kantian judgment, however, goes one layer deeper insofar as each takes the rather unusual step of linking the extra-conceptual, cognitive dispositions to distinctively affective states. In many respects, philosophy and rhetoric are united in their recognition of the potential for the passions to affect the outcome of a judgment. Immanuel Kant's master thought, the axis around which the critical project turns, is that judgment is the minimal basic unit of human intelligibility. The possibility that one may be faulted for having the wrong perceptions or experience of the world puts the Kantian account of judgment squarely in the domain of traditional rhetoric, a fact of which Kant himself appears to be at least partially aware. The rhetorical subtext, however, indicates how the problem of judgment goes deeper than one and the same object bearing compatible descriptions at varying levels of specificity.
