The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to critical theory:
Hans-Georg Gadamer was a German philosopher of the continental tradition, best known for his 1960 magnum opus on hermeneutics, Truth and Method.
Romare Bearden was an American artist, author, and songwriter. He worked with many types of media including cartoons, oils, and collages. Born in Charlotte, North Carolina, Bearden grew up in New York City and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and graduated from New York University in 1935.
Hermeneutics is the theory and methodology of interpretation, especially the interpretation of biblical texts, wisdom literature, and philosophical texts. As necessary, hermeneutics may include the art of understanding and communication.
Wilhelm Dilthey was a German historian, psychologist, sociologist, and hermeneutic philosopher, who held Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's Chair in Philosophy at the University of Berlin. As a polymathic philosopher, working in a modern research university, Dilthey's research interests revolved around questions of scientific methodology, historical evidence and history's status as a science.
Arto Haapala is a Finnish philosopher, aesthetician and Professor of Aesthetics at the Department of Philosophy, History, Culture and Art Studies at Helsinki University, Finland. Haapala received his PhD from Birkbeck, University of London in 1985. He is also active in the work of the Finnish Society for Aesthetics and the International Institute of Applied Aesthetics in Lahti, Finland.
Robert L. Bernasconi is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Philosophy at Pennsylvania State University. He is known as a reader of Martin Heidegger and Emmanuel Levinas, and for his work on the concept of race. He has also written on the history of philosophy.
Babette Babich is an American philosopher who writes from a continental perspective on aesthetics, philosophy of science, especially Nietzsche's, and technology, especially Heidegger's and Günther Anders, in addition to critical and cultural theory.
Hugh J. Silverman was an American philosopher and cultural theorist whose writing, lecturing, teaching, editing, and international conferencing participated in the development of a postmodern network. He was executive director of the International Association for Philosophy and Literature and professor of philosophy and comparative literary and cultural studies at Stony Brook University, where he was also affiliated with the Department of Art and the Department of European Languages, Literatures, and Cultures. He was program director for the Stony Brook Advanced Graduate Certificate in Art and Philosophy. He was also co-founder and co-director of the annual International Philosophical Seminar since 1991 in South Tyrol, Italy. From 1980 to 1986, he served as executive co-director of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy. His work draws upon deconstruction, hermeneutics, semiotics, phenomenology, aesthetics, art theory, film theory, and the archeology of knowledge.
Jeff Malpas is an Australian philosopher and emeritus distinguished professor at the University of Tasmania in Hobart. Known internationally for his work across the analytic and continental traditions, Malpas is also at the forefront of contemporary philosophical research on the concept of "place", as first and most comprehensively presented in his Place and Experience: A Philosophical Topography—now in its second edition—and further developed in numerous subsequent works.
Patricia Altenbernd Johnson is Distinguished Service Professor Emerita of Philosophy at the University of Dayton. She has written books about contemporary philosophers. She is a specialist in philosophy of religion, hermeneutics and 19th and 20th century continental philosophy, and on the works of Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer.
Andrew S. Bowie is Professor of Philosophy and German at Royal Holloway, University of London and Founding Director of the Humanities and Arts Research Centre (HARC).
Georgia Warnke is a Distinguished Professor of Political Science and the Director of the Center for Ideas & Society at the University of California, Riverside. She chaired the Department from 2002 to 2004. She also acted as the Associate Dean for Arts and Humanities, College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at UCR from 2006 to 2011.
Ruth Inge Hardison was an American sculptor, artist, and photographer, known particularly for her 1960s busts entitled "Negro Giants in History". Hardison's 1983 collection called "Our Folks", which features sculpted portraits of everyday people, is also of note. Her artistic productions largely surround historical black portraiture. She was especially interested in creatively representing the unspoken voices of the African American past. She was the only female in the Black Academy of Arts and Letters (BAAL), a group that encourages awareness of black artistic accomplishments, when this organization was founded in 1969.
Andrzej Wierciński is a hermeneutician, philosopher, and theologian. As the transdisciplinary thinker, he is Professor of Liberal Arts, Faculty of Artes Liberales at the University of Warsaw, President-Founder (2001) of the International Institute for Hermeneutics (IIH), and President of Agora Hermeneutica (IIH).
The hermeneutics of suspicion is a style of literary interpretation in which texts are read with skepticism in order to expose their purported repressed or hidden meanings.
The North American Society for Philosophical Hermeneutics is an organization whose purpose is to advance the study of philosophical hermeneutics. Although the society has a particular interest in the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer, it likewise encourages dialogue and engagement with a multitude of philosophical thinkers, traditions, and contemporary concerns. It was established in 2005.
Nicholas Davey is a British philosopher and professor of philosophy at the University of Dundee. He is known for his expertise in aesthetics, hermeneutics, and his work on Hans-Georg Gadamer. Davey has also played a leading role in founding several research groups and institutes at the University of Dundee, which include Theoros, Hermeneutica Scotia, and the university's Arts and Humanities Research Institute.
Cynthia A. Freeland is an American philosopher of art. She has published three monographs, over two dozen articles, and edited several books. She is emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Houston. She was the president of the American Society of Aesthetics until 2017. She has been awarded a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2003 for a research project on Fakes and Forgeries. Her book But is it Art? (2001) has been translated into fourteen languages and was republished as part of the Oxford Very Short Introductions series. She talked about her book Portraits&Persons with Nigel Warburton on the Philosophy Bites podcast. She was interviewed by Hans Maes for the book Conversations on Art and Aesthetics (2017) which includes a photograph of her by American photographer Steve Pyke.
Hans-Herbert Kögler, is a German-American philosopher.
