What Is the Present?

North offers an intriguing challenge to philosophers about the unity of time. We clearly use the idea of the present to pick out relevantly longer chunks of time than could be perceptual and which nevertheless are not merely gerrymandered or ad hoc. In what does this internal unity of the present consist? While North's eventual target is modernity, the path he takes to get there is of interest to a wide range of philosophical discussions about the nature of time, the character of temporal experience, and the ontology of temporally extended social kinds. --Holly K. Andersen, Simon Fraser University A bracing, expansive, and consistently surprising meditation on the notion of the present. In an authoritative yet lucid style, Michael North animates with great panache some of the most profound and persistent questions in the history of ideas. --David James, author of Modernist Futures: Innovation and Inheritance in the Contemporary Novel This extraordinary book provides a masterful survey of a notoriously baffling subject, yet does so in wonderfully accessible and engaging prose. What Is the Present? is superb scholarship but also exciting news--a captivating report from the front lines of cultural and intellectual engagement. I love this book. --Jesse Matz, author of Lasting Impressions: The Legacies of Impressionism in Contemporary Culture