The proposed manual has a research focus to determine the origins of philosophical teachings, outline the path and main achievements of philosophy, predict the prospects for its development, but expresses it in a specific way. The idea is conveyed here that the history of philosophy is a branch of the spiritual culture of mankind. The condition for the existence of philosophy and its preservation over centuries and millennia is the division of social labor into mental and physical. In this context, philosophy found its calling as an isolated creative mental activity that collects, transforms and transmits from generation to generation the fruits of meaningful spiritual creativity. Philosophy arose as a questioning, problematic consciousness, born of relatively narrow but influential groups of people capable of creating publicly and expressing critical and creative thought in relation to the traditional spiritual values that have developed in a particular society. Most often, such values were sanctified by myths and religion, but often “hard-headed thinking” was demonstrated by growing science. In the interaction and identification of relationships with these elements of culture, there was a constant movement of philosophical thought. The manual demonstrates that philosophy was born in the era of the formation of a kind of “axial time”, at the turning point of the civilizational development of mankind. It replaced the figurative poetic and mythological worldview, offering a conceptually designed worldview. It developed a new generalized type of knowledge and created a conceptually meaningful attitude of man to the world. The author also shows that the history of philosophy itself includes various turning points and transformations, which in general coincide with the cultural transformations of specific social systems. As a result, a conclusion emerges that there is no single and universal philosophy for all times. Every philosophy is a child of its era. While maintaining a principled approach to understanding the world, it changes its forms and content. It always remains a unique area of spiritual freedom, and this is the value of philosophy for all generations. The proposed manual should be considered as auxiliary material for independent study of the ideological wealth and creative path of development of philosophy, as a step towards understanding original philosophical works, without studying which real mastery of philosophical principles is impossible knowledge. The author expresses the hope that for those who are at the beginning of the path to philosophical wisdom, this manual will be of some benefit.