Adrian Johnston (philosopher)

Adrian Johnston is an American philosopher. He is Distinguished Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque and a faculty member at the Emory Psychoanalytic Institute in Atlanta.

Philosophical work

Influenced by Slavoj Žižek and his readings of German idealism, Johnston's work is guided by what he calls “transcendental materialism”: an ontology that is materialist while nevertheless refusing to reduce away the gap that is human subjectivity. Johnston argues for retooling Freud and Lacan after the success of the natural sciences in recent decades, while also arguing that Freud and Lacan presaged many of these successes. Johnston is critical of the thinkers of immanence whom he believes can only give us subjectless substance.