Merab Konstantinovich Mamardashvili (1930–1990) is one of the most significant thinkers of the second half of the twentieth century. This publication includes two courses of lectures given by M.K. Mamardashvili to VGIK students. In lectures on ancient philosophy (1980), the focus is on the problem of being, arising in the space of ancient Greek thought. In the reflections of Greek philosophers, the author traces the fundamental principles underlying the ancient, and subsequently European, ideal of thinking and understanding the world and man. Lectures on modern European philosophy (1978–1979) are devoted to the main cross-cutting ideas that are the core of the philosophical culture of the twentieth century. Turning to the works of Kierkegaard, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Husserl, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Sartre and others, M. K. Mamardashvili identifies ideas that permeate all directions, are their crystallizations, thereby creating some unity of style of modern philosophical thought.< /p>