p It is in aesthetic categories that man’s aesthetic attitudes to the real world are revealed and find their most universalised reflection. These attitudes are just as inexhaustible in their diversity as in socio-historical experience, in the course of which are shaped man’s aesthetic sensitivity, aesthetic needs and faculties and aesthetic evaluation of phenomena in the objective world. Yet in this diversity of aesthetic attitudes, in the apparent tangle of coincidence, in the mass of uniquely individual manifestations of aesthetic activity, we do find certain patterns at work, which the human consciousness perceives as aesthetic categories. Lenin’s well-known definition of the essence of scientific categories is vitally important in relation to the definition of aesthetic categories, as well as those from other fields: "Man is confronted with a web of natural phenomena. Instinctive man, the savage, does not distinguish himself from nature. Conscious man does distinguish, categories are stages of distinguishing, i.e., of cognising the world, focal points in the web, which assist in cognising and mastering it.”  [173•* 

p Focal points of man’s aesthetic cognition and faculty for aesthetic evaluation are the beautiful and sublime, the tragic and comic. These of course do not represent the sum of aesthetic categories. In the past aesthetics employed, as it indeed still does, a wider range of concepts, 174 which there is also reason to regard as categories. Yet it would seem well-advised to regard the above categories as those fundamental to aesthetics: both man’s aesthetic attitudes to the world and the objects embraced by those attitudes are most fully appreciated in them, when it comes to both form and content. As for the other aesthetic categories, they can be divided into three types.

p The first consists of categories which, being relatively independent, should really be regarded as ramifications or specific particularised expressions of the fundamental categories. These include, for example, the heroic, the majestic, taste, humour, etc., since the heroic is a particular manifestation of the sublime and the tragic, and humour of the comic, etc.

p The second consists of categories of structural character —proportion, harmony, etc. We often use these categories as criteria for aesthetic assessment; for example we argue that certain phenomena are beautiful, because they stand out by virtue of their classical proportions. Yet it should be remembered that something deserving a negative aesthetic assessment might be extremely well- proportioned. In concepts of proportion and harmony we are expressing important features of the aesthetic structure of phenomena, but this is still not enough to bring out their aesthetic nature, their aesthetic essence or to reach a complete aesthetic assessment of such phenomena.

p The third consists of categories which enable us to determine the essence of the aesthetic in negative form. Here we are dealing with for instance the ugly and the base, which as mentioned earlier can also be distinguished by a certain expediency or proportion: for the aesthetician they are of interest and worthy of investigation as the antipodes of the beautiful and the sublime.

p Systems of aesthetic categories are subject to historical modification. In the history of aesthetic theory categories have been classified in various ways. They are sometimes classified differently in one and the same age. The more widely the aesthetic principle penetrates socio-historical experience, the more scope is provided for definition of 175 man’s aesthetic attitudes to reality in new categories, in different category classifications.

p In the idealist aesthetics of today conceptions to the effect that there is supposedly little justification for singling out such key factors of aesthetic cognition as aesthetic categories have gained considerable ground. Even Croce in his day regarded aesthetic categories as pseudoconcepts bereft of content. Nowadays a similar stand is adopted by many prominent Western aestheticians, notably Thomas Munro. Yet rejection of aesthetic categories is tantamount to rejection of theoretical systematisation for aesthetic concepts, and for aesthetics, as indeed for any science, the systematisation of categories is an indispensable condition for fruitful development. In the process of man’s artistic apprehension of reality such traditional categories as the beautiful, the sublime, the tragic and the comic remain fundamental and essential “pillars” of scientific aesthetic analysis. Quite a different consideration is the historical development of categories, the appearance of new categories resulting from the extension of the scope for man’s aesthetic grasp of the world, or new approaches to the interpretation of traditional categories.

p The theoretical elaboration of aesthetic categories has occupied its due place in Marxist literature since the middle of the fifties. This was a logical development insofar as by then socialist social relations had taken firmer root, and the need for the harmonious development of the personality had rendered the intellectual and cultural life of socialist society more profound, and enhanced the role of art in the life of the modern man. It had thus become clear that art could not be dealt with merely as another form of social consciousness; the need was felt by then for theoretical substantiation of the specific features of art, something that would have been impossible without elucidation of the nature of the aesthetic. This urgent need for theoretical elaboration of the essence of the aesthetic was dictated not only by the development of art itself, but also by the wide penetration by the artistic 176 principle of the most diverse spheres of life. Socialist reality has demonstrated particularly vividly that there are no socially significant phenomena that defy aesthetic evaluation.

p Naturally the works of Marxist writers have been concerned above all with the elaboration of a materialist conception of the aesthetic. They have not been confined to mere criticism of idealist concepts or to theoretical substantiation of the objective nature of the beautiful, the sublime and other diverse manifestations of the aesthetic. The very understanding of the fact that the aesthetic is objective in Marxist literature has led to serious and fruitful discussion, impelled by the complexity of the subject under investigation, the various aspects of which are reflected and brought out in often divergent ideas. Yet despite the motley profusion of these ideas, in recent years two basic trends have emerged in efforts to explain the nature of the aesthetic. The question at issue here is whether the aesthetic amounts to the natural, physical properties peculiar to phenomena from the real world, or to the social significance of these phenomena, stemming from socio-historical experience and taking shape on the basis of that experience. The first of these viewpoints is referred to as the “natural” conception, and the second as the “social” or “sociological” conception.  [176•* 

The rational content of the “natural” conception underlines and singles out the importance of natural properties that in the course of social experience acquire an aesthetic character. The scientific value of the “sociological” concept is that it substantiates the decisive role of sociohistorical experience with regard to man’s aesthetic attitudes to the real world. Debates centred on the correlation between the natural and social factors within the aesthetic spotlight the most complex and thorny problems 177 of aesthetics. Yet it is impossible to agree with Max Dessoir who maintains that these problems constitute the aesthetician’s cross.  [177•*  It is in controversies between the adherents of the various conceptions that the modern interpretation of the essence of the aesthetic and its diverse manifestations is crystallised.