A philosophy book with the blunt title Just the Arguments caught my eye at Barnes & Noble a couple of weeks ago. Edited by Michael Bruce and Steven Barbone, the book is a collection of articles on what the editors claim are “100 of the most important arguments in Western philosophy.” This no-nonsense approach is welcome relief in philosophy. Anyone who has taken a course in the subject and slogged through original sources knows what a chore it can be to figure out what is being argued and how. Undergraduate and even graduate level philosophy students will find the book very helpful. The general public can benefit as well because many of the arguments are easy to follow and rules of logic that justify inferences are shown. There’s a glossary of technical concepts at the end. So, do we really get 100 of the most important arguments in Western philosophy? True enough, there are many famous ones from Plato, Aristotle, Hume, and Kant. Major arguments in the...(Read Full Article)