Sebastian Gardner Explained

Region:Western philosophy
Era:21st-century philosophy
Sebastian Gardner
Birth Date:1960 3, df=y
School Tradition:German idealism
Institutions:University College London
Main Interests:Kant, nineteenth-century German philosophy, psychoanalysis, Sartre, aesthetics
Thesis Title:Sartre's critique of Freud: irrationality and the philosophy of psychoanalysis
Thesis Url:https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.238699
Thesis Year:1987
Education:University of Cambridge (PhD)
Awards:Leverhulme Research Fellowship
Website:http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctyseg/

Sebastian Angus Gardner (born 19 March 1960) is a British philosopher and Professor of Philosophy in the University College London. He is known for his expertise on Kant, German Idealism, Sartre and Freud, and for his philosophical interpretations and investigations in the subject of psychoanalytic theory.[1] [2]

Education and career

Gardner earned his B.A. in 1982 and his Ph.D. in 1987, both from the University of Cambridge. His doctoral thesis, later revised into a book publication, dealt with Sartre's critique of Freud. He taught first at Birkbeck College, London and, since 1998, at UCL.[3] He has written extensively on Freud and psychoanalysis, on Kant, and on post-Kantian philosophy, including Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Nietzsche.

His 1993 book Irrationality and the Philosophy of Psychoanalysis attempted to justify a view of the psychoanalytic subject and the unconscious which nevertheless maintained fidelity to Sartre's critique of the Freudian unconscious and the censorship mechanism. Gardner argues for the failure of sub-systemic theories of the mind (such as those of cognitive psychology) to provide a framework for actively irreconcilable or self-contradicting actions, utterances, or impulses, which can be conceptualised as internal to the subject. He therefore distinguishes between the propositional structure of consciousness which is distorted by the 'pre-propositional' forms of the unconscious. In this sense the unconscious does not directly 'compete' with conscious structures, but is rather irreducible to the modes in which conscious discourse is articulated. Kleinian phantasy, as a pre-linguistic composition of part-objects and drives, is presented as a potential way of understanding such a pre-propositional unconscious.[4]

Gardner has written multiple essays on authors including Freud, Nietzsche, Derrida, Habermas, Lacan, and has more recently published books on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and Sartre's Being and Nothingness.

Books

Edited

External links

Notes and References

  1. Cottingham . John . Irrationality and the Philosophy of Psychoanalysis . . October 1996 . 46 . 185 . 544–546 . 10.2307/2956372 . Cambridge University Press. 2956372 .
  2. Shabel . Lisa . Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason. Sebastian Gardner . Mind . 1 July 2001 . 110 . 439 . 753–756 . 10.1093/mind/110.439.753 . en . 0026-4423.
  3. Web site: Professor Sebastian Gardner. 26 July 2018.
  4. Book: Gardner, Sebastian . Irrationality and the Philosophy of Psychoanalysis . Cambridge University Press . 1993-03-25 . 978-0-521-41090-8 . 10.1017/cbo9780511554599. .