Universal History Annotation << Back Ethnocultural Explication of World Outlook Opposition of Life and Non-existence in Mifoepichesk Consciousness M.А. Hokonov A.V. Gucheva The presented paper is devoted to the philosophical interpretations of the mythological understanding and the mythoephic specific understanding of the relation of being and non-being. The special attention is given to the comparative interpretation of the various mythoephic stories which focused on the general awareness of the dialectic of natural and social, tribal and individual, life and death, harmony and chaos. The semiotic-symbolic forms of the social and the cultural development of the categories of being and non-being are analyzed as the fundamental way of building the archaic models of the world order, the social order and the collective activity. The phenomenon of the myth is considered both from the ontology and the metaphysics viewpoints: the relation of the myth to the categories of being, nothingness and creation; natural and the supernatural in the myth; the mythological models of the world are analyzed as the primary level of the dialectic of the cultural and historical consciousness. The study also shows the internal inconsistency of the mythoephic consciousness, and its elements are defined as the stable formations that provide the historical and the cultural continuity and the integrity of the internal public consciousness at the level of the primary mythological models of the socio-cultural integration. Keywords: myth, epic, being, nothingness, consciousness, category, character, thinking. Contacts: E-mail: mhokonov@gmail.com Pp. 39-47.