The paper reconstructs the key epistemological ideas of Merab Mamardashvili which form the bridge between his philosophy and phenomenology. He advances four key concepts in his sketch of a natural historical epistemology: the geometry of causal experience, the belonging to a certain time, the chronotype of a subject, and the ‘elaboration’ of the mind by consciousness. The concept of “fruitful tautology” leads Mamardashvili to a new aesthetics of thinking. The semiotics, rightfully included in Russian social sciences, assumes that the symbol (...) is a certain universal first element of psychic reality. (shrink)