In order to identify genesis of moral-ethical phenomenon, author starts from certainty of its historical, and not “eternal”, character. Its rudimental form is found in proto-moral consciousness and proto-ethical philosophical standpoint of the Sophists. Resting upon Aristotle and Hegel, author reconstructs Hellenic system of ethical life (Sittlichkeit) and shows the meaning of historical turn the Sophists made within that system by their own philosophical and cultural mission. Within this turn, moral-ethical phenomenon was born as a product of sophistic confrontation of principle of reason (reasoning) with traditional representational consciousness.