Is it me or is that rhetoric breathing?

As happened to Mitch, Boethius' overview opened up a new dimension in me, though in my case I was less intrigued on the parallels to Aristotle’s types of discourse and more to connections within a broad understanding of how rhetoric itself exists (or should I say survives?) as a faculty in both we as individuals and a society—an idea I (like Mitch and his type) thought I had a rather fair handle on, after this last paper.

            In Boethius’ overview, the metaphor he picks to represent this overarching view of rhetoric is a fascinatingly organic one. Likening rhetoric to some strain of curious organism, he states, “By genus, rhetoric is a faculty; by species, it can be one of three: judicial, demonstrative, deliberative.” (488, col. 1) To me, this framework made my mental placement of rhetoric click in a wonderfully lucid way. He talks of the five ‘parts’ (invention, disposition, style, memory, and delivery— see 489 col. 1) that make up rhetoric, as well as the constant goal or 'duty' of rhetoric, "to speak in such a way as to persuade" (p. 490, col. 1). Going a step deeper, Boethius maintains that if all of rhetoric’s five parts are present, rhetoric as an ‘organism’ is inherently present in full as well, and by definition its goal—to persuade—is present with it. This made sense to me both in a Shakespearean sense (“A rose by any other name…”) and an organismal one (if every part of a lizard is there, what we’re looking at is demonstratively a lizard—such is the nature of identification).

Rhetoric?

Thus, if, as Boethius describes, it is “the duty of the faculty of rhetoric to teach and to move”, any time someone is attempting to achieve that goal, the organism of rhetoric must be present, and aiming towards the same thing, in its existence containing, by definition, all of the traits that make it so. But to take Boethius’ metaphor one step further than he himself does: within a species there are always individuals. Though individuals within a species will have every one of a number of certain constituents (humans arms, legs, livers, teeth, etc), or traits (canny, curious, bold, wary, etc), minor differences within those constituents or traits will make the organism more or less efficient at that organism’s ‘ultimate goal'. Boethius says, “For if a deficiency in any of those qualities…causes him to fail to persuade, then…the goal is not attained.” (490, col. 1). Here, since the species of rhetoric is a faculty and must exist as a sort of parasite, its means of reproduction are more viral than sexual. Therefore, for rhetoric, having very efficient alignments or variations to its constituents makes its goal of persuasion very likely. The most efficient individuals within a species of rhetoric will become the most widespread; look at Aristotle’s sexy combinations of ethos, logos, pathos, for example. Like a finely tuned animal, a successful rhetorical combination will stalk through the centuries largely unchanged. But also, like any adaptable vermin, if some change of scenery makes the going tough, it molts its ragged feathers and stretches into something sleek and new. Just look at oratory’s shift into writing, texting, and visual media.

Perhaps Boethius did not mean to take his speciation of rhetoric to this level. Perhaps I just went and got a bit too excited. But thinking about rhetoric in this way made me (at least) get some funky mental imagery of rhetoric as a kid of mutualistic coinhabitant of our bodies, and (at most) made me look at the organic nature of this faculty in an entirely new way.

“But,” as Boethius would say, “enough of this.”

(489, col. 1)