Dr. Garner joined the UWG Philosophy Program in 2014 after studying at Villanova University (Ph.D. Philosophy ⇗, 2014) and Florida State University (B.A. Religion ⇗, 2005). He is originally from the rural Wiregrass region of the South (near Bonifay, Florida). His teaching and research interests range from ancient Greek philosophy to continental philosophy, philosophy of religion, and critical and comparative thought broadly (including translation thereof). His most significant research is linked below:

Books:

Imagination and Truth: Creative Discovery in the Platonic Tradition (Bloomsbury Academic; scheduled for release Dec. 2026). [peer-reviewed monograph] ⇗

• Abstract: This book explores imagination as both creative and an instrument of discovery. Beginning with Proclus’s concept of phantasia—which mediates between the purely thinkable and sensible levels of the world—and dialoguing with ideas from, e.g., Susanne Langer, Cornelius Castoriadis, Henry Corbin, and Amy Kind, it sees imagination as sharing responsibility for orienting human experience through its many modes of truthful presentation. The grander goal is to recover for our times a valuable ancient perspective by way of conversing carefully and dialectically with recent views in aesthetics, phenomenology, and philosophy of mind. 

The Emerging Good in Plato's Philebus (Northwestern University Press, 2017). [peer-reviewed monograph] ⇗

• Reviews: D. Hoinski in Ancient Philosophy 40 (1), 2020. ⇗ ; S. Ogihara in The Classical Review 68 (2), 2018. ⇗ ; M. Korngut in Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2018.09.28, 2018. ⇗ ; C. Smith in Ancient Philosophy 38 (2), 2018. ⇗

Other Research (selection): 

“Learning from Imagination: Proclus in Dialogue with a Contemporary Debate,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy, in press ('early view' available 5/2025). [peer-reviewed article] ⇗

“An Institution of Waiting: Capital Punishment in Weil and Camus,” in Rethinking Political Crisis and Collapse: Hannah Arendt and Simone Weil, eds. A. Calcagno and M. Yenson (Bloomsbury), 2026. [peer-reviewed book chapter] ⇗

“The Imaginal World and the Orientation of Perception: Henry Corbin and the French Phenomenological Context,” The Journal of Religion 104 (1), 2024. [peer-reviewed article] ⇗

w/ Christopher P. Noble, “Possibility or Necessity? On Robert Watt’s ‘Bergson on Number’,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 32 (1), 2024. [peer-reviewed discussion article] ⇗

Cornelius Castoriadis, The Greek Imaginary: From Homer to Heraclitus, Seminars 1982–1983, co-trans. John V. Garner and M.-C. Garrido Sierralta (Edinburgh University Press, 2023). [book translation] ⇗

“Creative Discovery: Proclus and Plato on the Emergence of Scientific Precision,” Epoché 24 (2), 2020. [peer-reviewed article] ⇗

“Foreword,” in Cornelius Castoriadis, Democracy and Relativism: A Debate, vii-xxix, trans. John V. Garner (RLI/Bloomsbury, 2019). [book foreword] ⇗

“Thinking Beyond Identity: Numbers and the Identity of Indiscernibles in Plato and Proclus,” Idealistic Studies 47 (1/2), 2017. [peer-reviewed article] ⇗

“Gadamer and the Lessons of Arithmetic in Plato’s Hippias Major,” META: Research in Hermeneutics, Phenomenology, and Practical Philosophy 9 (1), 2017. [peer-reviewed article] ⇗

“Cornelius Castoriadis,” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2011/2015. [peer-reviewed encyclopedia entry] ⇗

For complete works, see Garner's CV. ⇗