The rise of speculative philosophy in Greece was coincident with the beginning of prose composition, and many of the earliest philosophers wrote in the prose of the Ionic dialect; others, however, and especially the writers of the Greek colonies in Italy and Sicily, expounded their systems in continuous poems composed in the epic hexameter.
Thus in the period 1520-1550 we have separate chapters on ancient literature, theology, speculative philosophy and jurisprudence, the literature of taste, and scientific and miscellaneous literature; and the subdivisions of subjects is carried further of course in the later periods.
In consequence of the state of his health, however, he returned to Basel in 1733, where he was appointed professor of anatomy and botany, and afterwards of experimental and speculative philosophy.
From this vantage-ground Ritschl criticizes the use of Aristotelianism and speculative philosophy in scholastic and Protestant theology.
It is no more than characteristic of Kant's whole speculative philosophy that he should' think the Ontological argument the one which comes nearest to st,-cess (yet the Ontological argument is held to prove - or rather to point out - not that God must exist, but that we think of him as necessary if we think of him as existing at all).
