The article describes the genesis of the concept of consciousness from Antiquity to New time. The authors argue that in philosophy the concept of consciousness has originally been interpreted as «intelligent part of soul». Then it was rationalized, and the signification of the notion of consciousness transformed into «the contemplation by the subject of the maintenance of own inner world». The following research of the phenomenon of consciousness led to the forming of the concept seizing it as the independent substance having the special functions and the complicated structure.