Michael Schwartz

Metatheory Team; Critical Theory Advisor Michael Schwartz, born in Brooklyn in 1957, and raised in Teaneck NJ (the first town in the USA to vote for integrated schooling via busing, prior to the SCOTUS decision), was educated at Rutgers College (BA in Literature) and Columbia University (PhD in Art History). He taught for 32 years, until his retirement in May, in the Department of Art and Design, Augusta University, as the sole art historian / theorist, working with studio artists in a transdisclipinary course of study that included integral and other metatheories of art and culture. He co-edited and co-authored the first book of academic philosophers engaging integral theory as a philosophy, Dancing with Sophia (SUNY Press 2019). Michael was trained as a Raphael and Renaissance scholar, and a lover of Rome, and ended up teaching and writing about art from the middle ages to the present, with stress on the Western lineages. For 5 years he was the Art Editor at Integral Life, curating and critically commenting on 50+ art galleries, and curated the first international exhibition of integral art at the 4th annual conference in Sonoma, CA. Outside of art history and integral theory, he worked in academic philosophy as co-founding executive director emeritus of the Comparative and Continental Philosophy Circle. Michael founded one of the two leading peer-reviewed journals in the field and organized annual conferences around the world—Iceland, Ireland, Holland, China, Taiwan, and elsewhere—which enabled face to face dialogue with philosophers from other world traditions. Core figures in the Circle include philosophers like John Sallis, the American heir to Heidegger and Derrida, for whose art philosophy work Michael co-edited a book. Michael also contributed to four private Critical Realism-Integral Theory symposia held by Integral Institute, contributing writings to the dialogue, and publishing on ethics in the CR journal as well as having done a blind reviews for that publication. He was planning with Roy Bhaskar an international private symposium on dialectic, to be held in London, and including Integralists, CRers, and philosophers from the Circle, only to be cut short by Roy's death in late 2014. Michael lives in Augusta GA with his wife, currently running his own national land investing business. Oh yes, he has a dog named Sunny, a love-bursting English Creme Golden Retriever. He is a long-time spiritual practitioner in sundry traditions and modality. In sum, he's no longer a young dude.