Life Is Short : Princeton University Press : 9780691240596 : 0691240590 : 20 Dec 2022 : "This brief book attempts to provide a 21st-century version of Seneca's classic essay, On the Shortness of Life. Like Seneca, Rickles seeks to motivate readers to meditate on how they use their time and offer some reasons why they mismanage this preciousresource. Drawing on new developments in the understanding of time, the self, and human agency, in philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, and physics, Rickles's basic aim is to highlight the essential nature of the limit provided by death and the ways in which this fact gives life its meaning. The book will also point to a number of solutions (and potential pitfalls in these) aimed at using time more wisely. Throughout the book the focus is on a pair of competing personality styles that are found to be atthe root of many of the problems Seneca unearthed, and can be associated with philosophical stances on personal identity and theories of time. These