""The universal rule, in oratory as in life, is to consider propriety" (Cicero, The Orator, 21.71). In this view, knowing the kairos means understanding an order that guides and shapes rhetorical action, whether that order is given and absolute or socially constructed. Violation of that order, failure to know the kairos and observe its propriety, will result in rhetorical, aesthetic, and even moral failure. This view of kairos is suited to philosophies of order, of realism, of Platonic Being."