Insofar as the fundamental question of any philosophy is essentially the correlation between matter and consciousness, a presentation of dialprHral materialism should start with a description of matter and the basic forms of its pHsfpnrp, the laws governing the emergence of consciousnpss and. itrelation to_ja3tter. Then we should proceed to an analysis of the laws governing the functioning and development of knowledge as the reflection of reality in man’s consciousness. This will be followed by a study of the categories and laws of dialectics as the forms of reflection of the universal aspects and connections of objective reality and knowledge. The order in which categories and laws are discussed is determined by the order in which the universal properties and laws of reality reflected in them are cognised.