The Dictionary offers a systematic description of concepts and terms in such fields of the humanities as philosophy (including ethics and aesthetics), literary, cultural and religious studies, and linguistics, as well as humanistic approaches to nature, history, society, and technology. The Dictionary contains 440 entries distributed among 14 thematic sections (in alphabetical order). Special attention is given to the development of new concepts and terms that reflect cultural and social processes of the 21st century and methods of intellectual creativity.

The author and compiler of the Dictionary is the prominent Russian-American cultural scholar, philosopher, and philologist Mikhail Epstein, professor of Emory University (USA) and honorary professor of Durham University (Great Britain). His unique approach enables a significant broadening of the conceptual system of the humanities: the linkage of various disciplines with one another, and with the creative practices arising on their theoretical basis. The ictionary expands the constructive potential of the humanities, revealing their capacity to generate new intellectual, literary, and artistic movements, cultural institutions, and even spiritual communities. Many terms and concepts initially proposed by the author have already entered general usage in cultural and literary studies. The book aims to develop innovative and imaginative ways of thinking on the part of researchers and students. It is addressed to all those interested in new perspectives on the humanities, as both the science and the art of human self-awareness and self-transformation.