The author takes up the question of the beginning of philosophy − its mythological-religious sources and autonomic constitution. He depicts Greek mythology (Homer and Hesiod) and its picture of the world as a cultural background for the first philosophers. He turns our attention to the formal (object, method and goal) and semantic (vision of the world and its „causes”) similarities and differences between the mythological thought and the philosophical thought. He claims that philosophy did not derive from mythology as a result of its evolution or transformation, but through a radical change in cognitive attitude: accepting the autonomy of the world and of human reason, and, eventually, a break-off from mythological religion.
