Darren M.
Gardner PhD

I am a philosopher and writer working on ancient philosophy, political thought, and the ideas that connect them to contemporary life. My academic work focuses on Plato and the Cynics — on philosophy understood not as a set of doctrines but as a practice, a way of inhabiting the world.

Available for writing and consulting work. Get in touch ↓

Before philosophy, fourteen years as a cabinetmaker and furniture maker in Brooklyn. That work continues at brooklyncraftsman.com.

Adjunct Assistant Professor · New York University Visiting Research Fellow · IWM Vienna, 2024 PhD · New School for Social Research  ·  BA · St. John's College, Annapolis

The Robber Baron and the Radical

Guest essay · CLIU Anon, Substack

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2025

Care for the Soul: Patočka, Plato, and Diogenes

IWM Post 133: False Prophets, False Promises

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2024

Selected publications

Ridicule, Chatter, and Laborious Play: The Ethical Use of Comedy in Plato's Parmenides

Forthcoming in Plato's Use of Humor, ed. Capra, Destrée & Zucker

Forthcoming

Cynicism as Immanent Critique: Diogenes and the Philosophy of Transvaluation

Polis, Vol. 39, Issue 1, pp. 123–148

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2022

Thought Experiments: Διάνοια as Propaedeutic Reasoning in Plato's Parmenides

Philodorema: Essays in Honor of Phillip Mitsis, Parnassos Press, pp. 85–98

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2022

The Knowable Many: Cosmos as Discursive Order in Hypothesis 3

Études Platoniciennes 15

2019

Hypotheses on Both Sides: Comments on Horan

Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium of Ancient Philosophy, Vol. XXXIV, pp. 33–40

2019

The Ambiguity of the 'One' in Plato's Parmenides

Methexis, Vol. 30, Issue 1, pp. 36–59

2018

Areas

I have taught at NYU, the University of Pennsylvania, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and the New School, across ancient philosophy, the history of ideas, and political thought.

Ancient Philosophy

Plato, Aristotle, pre-Socratics, Hellenistic thought

History of Philosophy

Medieval and Renaissance thought; reception and transmission

Social & Political Thought

From the polis to modernity; Arendt, Marx, and Plato

Aesthetics & Continental Philosophy

Art, politics, and critique; 20th-century Continental thought

Available for writing and consulting work. I welcome correspondence about philosophy, ideas, and projects at the intersection of academic and public life.

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