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] ⇗
    • This book explores imagination as both creative and integrated with human powers of discovery. Beginning with Proclus’s concept of phantasia—which mediates between thinkable and sensible reality—and dialoguing with ideas from, e.g., Susanne Langer, Cornelius Castoriadis, Henry Corbin, and Amy Kind, it sees imagination as orienting experience through truthful presentations. Methodologically, the task is likewise one of creative discovery: recovery of an ancient perspective through engagements with recent aesthetics, phenomenology, and philosophy of mind.
  • The Emerging Good in Plato's Philebus (Northwestern University Press, 2017). [peer-reviewed monograph] ⇗
    • This study examines Plato’s dialogue on the good life and argues, most centrally, that the pleasures of learning exemplify the possibility of good becoming or change. It sheds light on the dialogue’s ideas about the order of values and shows that the Philebus, while agreeing broadly with themes in more widely studied works by Plato such as the Gorgias, Phaedo, and Republic (e.g., “the good transcends being”), develops a unique way of salvaging the full spectrum of human life, including our ever-changing nature.
• 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: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 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] ⇗
• For complete works, see Garner's CV. ⇗