The book presents lectures given by M.K. Mamardashvili (1930–1990) to VGIK students in 1978–1979. The text is based on transcripts of audio recordings of lectures. Of the audio recordings themselves, today the Merab Mamardashvili Foundation has recordings of 7–11 lectures; in accordance with them, a number of corrections have been made to this edition compared to the 2010 publication. The internal plot of the “Essay on Modern European Philosophy” forms an interweaving of two themes: a one-time historical event of the birth of modernity with its specific possibilities and impossibilities and an ever-renewing, but not guaranteed event consciousness. Mamardashvili analyzes the situation of the formation of non-classical thinking, focusing especially on the phenomenological and psychoanalytic project. The implementation of an act of consciousness turns out to be the beginning of true historical life. The cover design uses the work of Francisco Infante ARTIFACTS from the series “Focuses of Curved Space” (1979) and the photograph of Igor Palmin “Merab Mamardashvili” (1980).