Parts is parts

In what is probably the singularly most concise summary of rhetoric we have encountered thus far, Boethius, in An Overview of the Structure of Rhetoric, summarizes rhetoric as such,”the faculty of rhetoric is a genus of which the species are judicial, demonstrative and deliberative. The subject      matter is any question of civil importance, called “a case.” The parts of this subject matter are the constitutiones. The parts of rhetoric are invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery. The tool used is the oration, and the parts of the tool are the exordium, the narration, the division, the proof, the refutation, the peroration. The function of the oration is to teach and to move. The practitioner is the orator, his duty is to speak well, and his goal is to have spoken well and to persuade.” (491).

Boethius spends quite a bit of time explaining the necessity for all of the parts of rhetoric to be employed in order for one to be an effective rhetor. Much like a Chicken McNugget, the flavor of an argument is dependent upon all of the parts being properly incorporated. Just as a Chicken McNugget would fail the taste test of the fast food consumer palate if the chicken feet and veins were left out, so too would rhetoric fail to persuade if style and invention were excluded from the faculty of rhetoric.

The one key distinction Boethius makes when discussing the need to include all parts of rhetoric is when it comes to constitutiones - conjecture, definition, quality and objection. He points out that the constitutiones function as the subject of the dispute and are therefore not merely parts of the case. Boethius’s example of the brothel to distinguish between a conjectural argument and an argument of definition (490) was very familiar and one which consummate orator and former president, Bill Clinton, took to heart. I definitely heard echoes of “it depends upon what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is” as I read the brothel metaphor…