This section intends to demonstrate how Aristotle's predilection for Platonic philosophy (and distrust of rhetoric) contributes to a slighting of delivery and establishes an overwhelming preference for the objectifying, rational, and codifiable procedures of invention. This preferencing leads him to at times conceptualize rhetoric- and its attention to context and performance- as a necessary, but unfortunate, evil. Consequently, Aristotle idealizes audience as a non-corporeal singular "judge" who sits beyond a rhetor's localized context. This idealizing leaves rhetoric indisposed to considering the ethical dimensions of information exchanges between a rhetor and her audience in that localized context.
In his recent historical survey of delivery, Martin Jacobi (2006) focuses his attention on Cicero and Quintilian, characterizing Aristotle as merely "conflating delivery with style" (p. 18). Given that Jacobi's interest is on practical advice for performance, Jacobi's lack of attention to Aristotle in understandable. True to his characterization, Book III of Aristotle's treatise, purportedly on "Delivery, Style, and Arrangement," contains no practical advice; of its nineteen chapters, eleven focus on lexis (style, mostly in terms of literary tropes) and another seven explore taxis (arrangement, specifically the proper ordering of parts for each type of speech). The remaining chapter, III.i, the first in the book and sole section addressing hypokrisis (delivery), offers more vituperate critique of than instructions for effective physical performance.
While III.i might not offer explicit advice on physical performance, we must be careful not to underestimate its significance--its omission is significant. In it, Aristotle suggests many ideas later elaborated by Cicero and Quintilian, including: delivery's importance to conveying a message, its connection to ethos, its attention to localized audiences, and its relationship to acting. This final observation foreshadows delivery's detrimental treatment: it brings us to close to the idea that persuasion is mere artistic trickery. In Aristotle's treatment of delivery we find another example of Plato and / or Socrates' distrust of rhetorical persuasion. And while Aristotle is a bit more forgiving to poets than his teacher(s), artisans don't measure up to philosophers in matters purporting to deal with "truth."