 Hans-Georg Gadamer is the decisive figure in the development of twentieth century hermeneutics—almost certainly eclipsing, in terms of influence and reputation, the other leading figures, including Paul Ricoeur, and also Gianni Vattimo (Vattimo was himself one of Gadamer’s students). Profoundly affected by the philosophy of Martin Heidegger (whose own influence on philosophical hermeneutics is pervasive despite Heidegger’s abandonment of the term in his later thought), Gadamer was trained in neo-Kantian scholarship as well as in classical philology. Central to Gadamer’s mature philosophy is a distinctive and thoroughly dialogical approach, based in Platonic-Aristotelian as well as Heideggerian thinking, that rejects subjectivism and relativism, abjures any simple notion of interpretive method, and grounds understanding in the linguistically mediated happening of tradition. Employing a more orthodox and modest, but also more accessible style than Heidegger himself, Gadamer’s work can be seen as concentrated in four main areas: the first, and clearly the most influential, is the development and elaboration of a philosophical hermeneutics; the second is the dialogue within philosophy, and within the history of philosophy, with respect to Plato and Aristotle in particular, but also with Hegel and Heidegger; the third is the engagement with literature, particularly poetry, and with art; and the fourth is what Gadamer himself terms ‘practical philosophy’ (Gadamer 2001, 78–85) encompassing contemporary political and ethical issues. The dialogical character of Gadamer’s approach is evident, not merely in the central theoretical role he gives to the concept of dialogue in his thinking, but also in the discursive and dialogic, even ‘conversational’ character of his writing, as well as in his own personal commitment to intellectual engagement and exchange (Gadamer uses the German term Gespräch which can be translated as either dialogue or conversation). Indeed, Gadamer is one of the few philosophers for whom the ‘interview’ has become a significant category of philosophical output (see Hahn 1997, 588–599; also Gadamer 2001, 2003). Although he identified connections between his own work and English-speaking ‘analytic’ thought (mainly via the later Wittgenstein, but also Donald Davidson—see Keane 2021), and has sometimes seen his ideas taken up by thinkers such as Alasdair McIntyre (see MacIntyre 2002), Ronald Dworkin (see Dworkin 1986), Robert Brandom (see Brandom 2002), John McDowell (see McDowell 1996, 2002), and especially Richard Rorty (Rorty 1979; see also Keane 2021), Gadamer is perhaps less well known, and certainly less well-appreciated, in English-speaking philosophical circles than are some of his near-contemporaries. He is undoubtedly, however, one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century, having had an enormous impact on a range of areas from aesthetics to jurisprudence, and having acquired a respect and reputation in Germany, and elsewhere in Europe, that went far beyond the usual confines of academia.