Sebastian Angus Gardner (born 19 March 1960) is a British philosopher and Professor of Philosophy in the

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

. He is known for his expertise on

Kant Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aest ...

German Idealism German idealism was a philosophical movement that emerged in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It developed out of the work of Immanuel Kant in the 1780s and 1790s, and was closely linked both with Romanticism and the revolutionary ...

Sartre Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (, ; ; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism (and phenomenology), a French playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and lite ...

and Freud, and for his philosophical interpretations and investigations in the subject of psychoanalytic theory.

Education and career

Gardner earned his B.A. in 1982 and his Ph.D. in 1987, both from

Cambridge University The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III of England, Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world' ...

. 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. He has written extensively on Freud and psychoanalysis, on Kant, and on post-Kantian philosophy, including

Fichte Johann Gottlieb Fichte (; ; 19 May 1762 – 29 January 1814) was a German philosopher who became a founding figure of the philosophical movement known as German idealism, which developed from the theoretical and ethical writings of Immanuel Ka ...

Schelling Schelling is a surname. Notable persons with that name include: * Caroline Schelling (1763–1809), German intellectual * Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775–1854), German philosopher * Felix Emanuel Schelling (1858–1945), American educato ...

, Hegel and

Nietzsche Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (; or ; 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, prose poet, cultural critic, philologist, and composer whose work has exerted a profound influence on contemporary philosophy. He began his car ...

. 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 (psychoanalysis), 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. Melanie Klein, Kleinian Fantasy (psychology), phantasy, as a pre-linguistic composition of part-objects and drives, is presented as a potential way of understanding such a pre-propositional unconscious.. Gardner has written multiple essays on authors including Freud,

, Derrida, Habermas, Lacan, and has more recently published books on Kant's ''Critique of Pure Reason'' and Sartre's ''Being and Nothingness''.

Books

* ''Irrationality and the Philosophy of Psychoanalysis'', Cambridge University Press, 1993 * ''Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason'', Routledge, 1999 * ''Sartre's Being and Nothingness'', Continuum, 2009

Edited

* ''Art and Morality'', edited with Jose Luis Bermudez, Routledge, 2003 * ''The Transcendental Turn'', edited with Matthew Grist, Oxford University Press, 2015

References

External links

Sebastian Gardner at UCL
21st-century British philosophers Philosophy academics Living people 1960 births Academics of University College London Alumni of the University of Cambridge Kant scholars Nietzsche scholars Sartre scholars Philosophers of art {{UK-philosopher-stub