The concept of the short term involves a complex network of quantitative, qualitative, and operational ideas. It is essential everywhere from the ontology of time, to the science of memory, to the preservation of art, to emotional life, to the practice of ethics. But what does the idea of the short term mean? What makes a temporal term short? What makes a time segment terminate? Is the short term a quantitative idea, or a qualitative or functional idea? When is it a good idea to understand events as short term events, and when is it a good idea to make decisions based on the short term? What does it mean for the nature of time if some of it can be short? Jay Lampert explores these questions in depth and makes use of the resources of short (as well as long) term processes in order to develop best temporal practices in ethical, aesthetic, epistemological, and metaphysical activities, both theoretical and practical. The methodology develops ideas based on the history of philosophy (from Plato to Hegel to Husserl to Deleuze), interdisciplinary studies (from cognitive science to poetics), and practical spheres where short term practices have been studied extensively (from short term psychotherapy to short term financial investments). Philosophy of the Short Term is the first book to deal systematically with the concept of the short term.

"Continuum Studies in Continental Philosophy" present the most cutting-edge scholarship in this major area of research and study. The wholly original arguments, perspectives and research findings in titles in this series make it an important and stimulating resource for students and academics from a range of disciplines across the humanities and social sciences. "Deleuze and Guattari's Philosophy of History" constructs, problematizes and defends a Deleuzian philosophy of history. Drawing on Deleuze's philosophy of time, it identifies key ideas and suggestions related to the philosophy of history from Deleuze and Guattari's major writings - including the seminal contemporary texts "Anti-Oedipus", "A Thousand Plateaux", ""Difference and Repetiton" and "The Logic of Sense" - and from this strating point goes on to develop a full and coherent philosophy of history. The book engages with Deleuze's theory of the 'pure past', exploring its implications for our understanding of history and time. The book covers the following themes: the role of dates in historical chronology; historical causality; historical origins; the character of historical events; and the diagnosis of such actual historical events as the rise of capitalism in Europe. This text is a groundbreaking, valuable and original contribution to the scholarship on Deleuze and Guattari, and contemporary Continental philosophy as a whole.

Through original speculations on the surprisingly complementary concepts of simultaneity and delay, and new interpretations of the great philosophers of time, this book proposes an innovative theory of staggered time. In the early 20th Century, Bergson and Husserl (following Einstein) made Simultaneity-what it means for events to occur at the same time-a central motif in philosophy.In the late 20th Century, Derrida and Deleuze instead emphasized Delay-events staggered over distant times.This struggle between convergent and staggered time also plays out in 20th Century aesthetics (especially music), politics, and the sciences. Despite their importance in the history of philosophy, this is the first book to comprehensively examine the concepts of simultaneity and delay.By putting simultaneity and delay into a dialectical relation, this book argues that time in general is organized by elastic rhythms. Lampert's concepts describe the time-structures of such diverse phenomena as atonal music, political decision-making, neuronal delays, leaps of memory and the boredom of waiting; and simultaneities and delays in everyday experience and behaviour.

In the sixth Logical Investigation, Husserl defines meaning, objectivity, and knowledge by appealing to "syntheses of fulfilment" each act of conscious ness has a meaning-intention whereby it anticipates a range of fulfilling intuitions, whose ongoing synthesis would identify intended objects in the face of their changing appearances. Synthesis is essential to phenomenological description. But what does it mean to say that one experience is combined with others? This monograph is a speculative-exegetical Husserlian analysis of the ground, the mechanisms, and the results of synthesis. Focusing on Husserl's Logical Investigations, I argue that synthesizing consciousness must be a self-propelling, self-explicating system of interpretative acts driven by ongoing forward and backward references, grounding its structures as it proceeds, and positing its origins as that which must have been given "in advance." To this end, I develop a dialectical reading of Husserl's largely untreated category of "referring backward" (zuruckweisen). Treatments of Husserl's concept of synthesis have tended to focus on Husserl's later work on passive synthesis. By drawing out the centrality of the concept of synthesis in the Logical Investigations, I show how synthesis is at the foundation of intentionality as such, and also indicate the continuity of descriptive categories that run through both the early and the late Husserl. The Introduction to this study schematizes the modem history of the concept of synthesis, and reviews the secondary literature on Husserl's concept of synthesis."

Combining two a central topics in philosophy in the 20th Century, this book considers the ethics and impact of decision-making alongside the philosophy of time. When we make simple decisions, like the decision to wake up at 8 a.m. tomorrow, we make use of a linear model of the future. But when we make open-ended decisions, like the decision to get fitter, or more involved in politics, we presuppose a much more complex model of the future. We project a variety of virtual futures. We can carry out a decision in many different ways at once, which may converge and diverge at different points in time. Using a phenomenological approach, The Many Futures of a Decision explores what we learn about the structure of the future specifically from decision-making. Most theories of decision concentrate on the rationality: the evidence and value assessments that build up grounds for a rational decision. Instead, this book innovatively engages with the nature of the future as a multi-layered decisions project. Through interpretations of the theories of decision in philosophers like Husserl and Heidegger, Schmitt and Habermas, Derrida and Deleuze, along with other decision theories, Lampert develops an original theory of multiple futures.

Deleuze and Guattari's Philosophy of History constructs, problematizes and defends a Deleuzian philosophy of history. Drawing on Deleuze's philosophy of time, it identifies key ideas and suggestions related to the philosophy of history from Deleuze and Guattari's major writings - including the seminal contemporary texts Anti-Oedipus, A Thousand Plateaux, Difference and Repetiton and The Logic of Sense. The book covers the following themes: the role of dates in historical chronology; historical causality; historical origins; the character of historical events; and the diagnosis of such actual historical events as the rise of capitalism in Europe. This text is a groundbreaking, valuable and original contribution to the scholarship on Deleuze and Guattari, and contemporary Continental philosophy as a whole.

Combining two a central topics in philosophy in the 20th Century, this book considers the ethics and impact of decision-making alongside the philosophy of time. When we make simple decisions, like the decision to wake up at 8 a.m. tomorrow, we make use of a linear model of the future. But when we make open-ended decisions, like the decision to get fitter, or more involved in politics, we presuppose a much more complex model of the future. We project a variety of virtual futures. We can carry out a decision in many different ways at once, which may converge and diverge at different points in time. Using a phenomenological approach, The Many Futures of a Decision explores what we learn about the structure of the future specifically from decision-making. Most theories of decision concentrate on the rationality: the evidence and value assessments that build up grounds for a rational decision. Instead, this book innovatively engages with the nature of the future as a multi-layered decisions project. Through interpretations of the theories of decision in philosophers like Husserl and Heidegger, Schmitt and Habermas, Derrida and Deleuze, along with other decision theories, Lampert develops an original theory of multiple futures.

Through original speculations on the surprisingly complementary concepts of simultaneity and delay, and new interpretations of the great philosophers of time, this book proposes an innovative theory of staggered time. In the early 20th Century, Bergson and Husserl (following Einstein) made Simultaneity-what it means for events to occur at the same time-a central motif in philosophy. In the late 20th Century, Derrida and Deleuze instead emphasized Delay-events staggered over distant times. This struggle between convergent and staggered time also plays out in 20th Century aesthetics (especially music), politics, and the sciences. Despite their importance in the history of philosophy, this is the first book to comprehensively examine the concepts of simultaneity and delay. By putting simultaneity and delay into a dialectical relation, this book argues that time in general is organized by elastic rhythms. Lampert's concepts describe the time-structures of such diverse phenomena as atonal music, political decision-making, neuronal delays, leaps of memory and the boredom of waiting; and simultaneities and delays in everyday experience and behaviour.