Introduction

This introduction chapter presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores historical approaches to temporal experience. It focuses on the dawn of Western philosophy with early Greek thought about time. The book then turns to the last heyday of theorizing about temporal experience – the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and to four of its luminaries: Hodgson, Husserl, Bergson and Stern. It presents the contemporary debate about temporal experience. The book introduces the central positions at the heart of that debate: cinematic or snapshot views, retentionalism and extensionalism. It also explores the connections between temporal experience and metaphysics. The book examines some of the rich connections between traditional aesthetic theorizing and work on temporal experience. It discusses the bearing of temporal experience on what is conventionally known as the A- versus B-theory debate.