The concept of time as a philosophical category reflects the objective reality in which a person lives. But it only reflects, acting in the process of human life as a subjective reality, in the form of a kind of “mirror” into which a person “looks”. Naturally, the question arises as to how much the image that a person sees in this “mirror” corresponds to objective reality. The nature of the current (synchrony) and historical (diachrony) time is interpreted by different researchers in different ways: from rectilinear to cyclic, from open to closed movement, etc. The dilemma of the phenomenon and the noumenon of time in the context of the emerging new reality makes this concept relevant not only in theoretical, but also in subject-practical aspects. The article discusses various worldview ideas about time, its essence and character, reveals specific theories of time in the history of world philosophy, shows the dialectics of time and its chronological formats, connection with the present, mediation by culture, including the level of development of science. In the context of the relationship between the concepts of “time” and “life”, “time” and “space”, the idea is formulated and argued that the technique of counting time (“chronotype”), as a technique for its quantitative assessment, had and still has a relative character, due to the specifics of various historical eras and does not allow us to comprehend its qualitative aspect, and, conse- quently - its essence, which can be revealed only in the dialectical unity of its quantitative and qualitative understanding. On the basis of scientific and artistic (metaphorical) ideas about time as a “stream of being”, the authors formulated a position about time as an essential characteristic of life.