Sean Kelly, Ph.D. is Professor of Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), specializing in integral ecology, environmental humanities, religion and ecology, integral theories and philosophies, Jungian and transpersonal psychology, archetypal cosmology, Romanticism and German Idealism. Sean Kelly received his Ph.D. in Religious Studies from the University of Ottawa in 1988 and taught in Canada at the University of Windsor, the University of Ottawa, and Carleton University before coming to CIIS in 1997. He is the author of Becoming Gaia: On the Threshold of Planetary Initiation, Coming Home: The Birth and Transformation of the Planetary Era, and Individuation and the Absolute: Hegel, Jung, and the Path toward Wholeness; co-editor (with Richard Tarnas) of Psyche Unbound: Essays in Honor of Stanislav Grof, (with Donald Rothberg) of Ken Wilber in Dialogue: Conversations with Leading Transpersonal Thinkers, and (with Sam Mickey and Adam Robbert) of The Variety of Integral Ecologies: Nature, Culture, and Knowledge in the Planetary Era; and co-translator of French thinker Edgar Morin’s Homeland Earth: A Manifesto for the New Millennium. His current research areas include the evolution of consciousness, integral ecologies, and transpersonal and integral theory. He has published articles in Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science, The Owl of Minerva: Journal of the Hegel Society of America, The Journal of Analytical Psychology, Idealistic Studies, Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, and World Futures. Along with his academic work, Sean has trained intensively in the Chinese internal arts (taiji, bagua, and xingyi) and has been teaching taiji since 1990. He has also worked closely with Joanna Macy and is a trained facilitator in The Work that Reconnects. His courses at CIIS include Introduction to Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness; Collapse and Regeneration; Integral Ecologies; The Great Turning; Hegel, Wilber, and Morin: Foundations of Integral Inquiry; Integral Tai Chi; and Psyche and Spirit: From the Psychology of Religion to Transpersonal Theory.
Why their voice matters: Sean presents a synthetic theory of the evolution of consciousness drawing from panoptic “big-picture” thinkers—from Hegel, Teilhard, Jaspers, and Campbell to Ken Wilber, Richard Tarnas, and Edgar Morin—to make newly intelligible not only our history but the specific challenges of the Planetary Era we have entered. By revealing the role of a “Great Code” and the turning of a tightening spiral in the evolution of the past two millennia of Western and increasingly planetary consciousness, Kelly demonstrates that comprehending our critical moment requires a larger frame of reference and deeper sources of insight than currently inform our cultural mindset. His integration of Hegel’s dialectic of history with the contributions of Jung, Teilhard de Chardin, Morin, Grof, and Campbell shows that the Planetary Era—which began five hundred years ago with the conquest of the Americas and the Copernican revolution but is just now becoming a defining feature of human consciousness on a global scale—demands understanding transformation not merely as changing ideas but as the capacity to actualize a sustainable planetary culture. Kelly’s embodied practice teaching taiji and facilitating The Work that Reconnects alongside his scholarly work proves that integral inquiry requires engaging whole existence rather than remaining purely intellectual, offering reason to hope alongside respect for the radical uncertainty facing us at this turning in our human journey.
