Vadim Mezhuev

The article is based on the report "Modern Problems of Philosophy of History", made at the seminar of the Academic Council of the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences, February 15, 2017 (https://iphras.ru/page13728537.htm). In article an attempt to reveal sense of the philosophical "idea of history" how she is understood and studied in historical science is made. Thus, it becomes possible to substantiate the special status of the philosophy of history in the general composition of historical knowledge. If historical science deals primarily with the past of mankind, then the philosophy of history sets itself the task of understanding the connection between the basic temporal modes of the historical process as a whole – the past, the present, and the future. A decisive role in that understanding is played not only by what is preserved in our historical memory, but also by our conception of the future, which, as a goal, meaning or purpose of history, is fixed in its philosophical idea. Each of the historical times is characterized by its special relationship with eternity. In the modern world, with its victory of time over eternity in its religious or metaphysical interpretation, the philosophy of history is possible as a historical selfawareness of a person who comes into contact with eternity not beyond time but in the time itself, which is therefore called the free time.