 The Islamic and Jewish traditions, as well as the Latin tradition until the 13th century, can be characterized by the diversity of literary forms for philosophical texts. A good deal of the philosophical creativity among these writers goes into the form in which they choose to write. The genres that dominate the 13th and 14th century, the Sentences commentary, the disputed question, and the logical developments of these forms in obligationes and sophismata, are academic, highly choreographed forms. In contrast to the earlier period, these forms do not allow an author much creative latitude. It is possible to read the development and waning of various forms and the movement toward standard forms in medieval philosophy in different ways. From one point of view, the variety of forms which flourished from the 10th to the 12th century can be seen as the high point from which the narrowing into the academic forms of the 13th and 14th centuries seems like a loss, not only in variety but from the connection to the larger spiritual and existential concerns treated in, for example, the allegories of Boethius or Avicenna and the meditations of Anselm. From another point of view (the more prevalent assumption of the secondary literature), the disputed question and other forms of high scholasticism are that toward which the earlier centuries made somewhat uneven but steady steps. In these forms, some might argue, philosophy finds its center in arguments for and against different positions. (See Kretzmann 1997, 301, where he argues that issues of style and rhetoric are not relevant to Aquinas’ “unadorned, straightforward, pellucid way of expounding, analyzing, and arguing — [which is] ideal for philosophy”.) The assumption, one arguably bequeathed to the Western philosophical tradition through Latin Medieval school forms, is that “straightforward argument” is not itself a style, rhetoric, and/or genre but the pure form of rationality and, hence, philosophy. At the same time as these developments in the form of philosophical/speculative thought, philosophy also becomes itself as the enterprise of reason alone, functioning independently of theology in the arts faculty. We can also see different medieval forms as indebted to either Plato or Aristotle as philosophical models. Even without the Platonic dialogues, the influence of Plato through Neoplatonism is evident in the forms that flourish before the 13th century, in allegory, meditation, and dialogue. These forms emphasize both the spiritual character of the highest truths philosophical/theological discourse strives to discover and reveal, and the difficulty, both intellectual and moral, of achieving insight.