p The crucial importance of the category of the ideal is predetermined by the basic question of philosophy which counterposes and relates matter and consciousness, the material and the ideal, being and thinking. The category of the ideal is inseparable from the basic question of philosophy, its statement and solution.

p This at once brings us to the problem of the relationship between the concepts of matter, the material, being, on the one hand, and those of consciousness, the ideal, and thinking, on the other. Can we reduce the three pairs of concepts to one pair? What are the distinguishing features of the category of the ideal as compared, for instance, with the category of consciousness?

p Laying aside, for the time being, a detailed analysis of these questions, we shall confine ourselves here to a few preliminary considerations. The basic question of philosophy, despite all its diverse wordings, boils down to what we acknowledge as having primacy: matter or consciousness, thinking or being, spirit or nature, the material or the ideal.^^1^^ Implicitly or explicitly, it is the corner-stone of all philosophical systems, teachings and conceptions, numerous and diverse as they are. The solution of the basic philosophical question predetermines the nature of the problems they concentrate upon and accounts for their other specific features. What is usually called philosophy pertains to the entire range of historically known philosophical theories and doctrines in all their diversity, continuity of ideas, distinctions and contrarieties, yet the fundamental epistemological problem of what is to be regarded as primary and what as secondary 13 remains pivotal to all of them and serves as the main criterion in assessing any philosophical trend.

p The content of concepts “being”, “matter”, “consciousness”, "the ideal" is very different with different philosophical trends (teachings, conceptions), yet it is sufficiently invariant to permit their exponents to distinguish between what relates to consciousness and what to matter. Highly abstract though it may be, this invariance is tangible enough for representatives of different philosophical trends to understand the meaning of the basic question of philosophy. In other words, this question formulated by Frederick Engels is clear not only to the materialists, but also to the advocates of various idealistic theories. To be sure, they may reject it as meaningless or question the need to answer it in clear terms, but in fact their way of thinking leads them to one of the two highroads and they are bound to make their choice which is not infrequently disguised under specific terminology.

p The specific content of the categories of matter and consciousness is only determined in the context of this or that philosophical trend after the solution of the basic question of philosophy, and then within the pattern of a specific teaching which falls in with the general line of the given philosophic tradition. Indeed, the content of the category of the ideal in the Hegelian system is very different from that in Marxist philosophy.

p Of course, one cannot deny the presence of certain common elements in the content of one and the same category in different philosophical schools which only attests to the historical continuity of philosophical knowledge. Such commonness is typical only of the most abstract qualities which by themselves cannot represent the specificity of a given basic category. If such most abstract qualities are not taken into account, we may apparently differentiate between three levels present in the description of philosophical categories: first, the characteristics common to the whole trend, e.g. to materialism; second, specific characteristics typical of and necessary for one or another variety of a given trend or a definite philosophical teaching that has taken shape within its general pattern (e.g. dialectical materialism as a specific, higher form of materialism retaining, however, the general materialist characteristics of basic categories); and third, the specific characteristics developed within the framework of one or another conception which 14 deals with the genesis of a category, its increasingly complex ties with other categories, its methodological functions, etc. Such kind of conceptions remaining within the framework of a given philosophical teaching represent the “buds” of new approaches and solutions which are yet to be tested; only some of them may eventually enter the basic theoretical fund of a given teaching (such new solutions can well be exemplified by different interpretations of the category of the ideal proposed in Marxist literature; their expounders treat this category from the dialectical materialist viewpoint and seek at the same -time to specify its content and deepen our understanding of its different aspects).

p The delimitation of the above-indicated three levels, schematic though it may be, helps to orient philosophers towards the investigation of the structure of a category’s content with due regard for its historical change. The historicity of categories reveals itself in the continuous enrichment of their content which includes not only a stable core of substance, but also the surrounding pulp of problems, the source of new growth of the substantive core.

p The specific content of a category can only be discussed in the context of a definite philosophical system, a concrete living philosophical doctrine. It is my intention to treat the problem in interest from the standpoint of Marxist philosophy and its specific categorial structure.

p In the basic question of philosophy focusing on the general, abstract contrariety and relationship of matter and consciousness (which are specified in different departments of philosophical knowledge), the categories of consciousness and the ideal are viewed as synonymous, though their contents are not identical.

p The differences between them are only revealed while the materialist solution of the basic question of philosophy is being concretised and grounded. Like many other philosophical categories close in content, consciousness and the ideal cannot be distinguished by extension. The difference between them comes out only as a result of the analysis of their content revealing a lack of coincidence of their logical functions in philosophy’s multidimensional domain of sense links. The affinity and even merging of their content in one context gives way to an obvious difference in another context.

p The category of the ideal is logically a necessary predicate of “consciousness”, though due to the equality of the extensions of these categories “consciousness” may in turn become a predicate of the “ideal”. The definition which predicates the ideal of consciousness has a particularly profound meaning in that it focuses attention on all those components of the category of consciousness which express its logical opposition to the category of matter and ranks them, as it were, on the same theoretical plane. Owing to the predicate “ideal” the content of the category of consciousness gains a highly important dimension which forms the theoretical foundation for the description, harmonisation and comprehension of spiritual phenomena in man’s world with their unique properties, specific mode of existence, qualitative difference from objective reality and the necessary connection with it. The category of the ideal reflects, above all, the specific character of the necessary links between spiritual phenomena and objective reality which are essentially different from the links between material objects.

p It would not be wrong to say that the category of consciousness is richer and more complex than that of the ideal. The latter has fewer shades of meaning, as it mainly highlights the specificity, uniqueness of the phenomena of consciousness providing a basis for counterposing them to objective reality. By contrast, the category of consciousness has a number of other aspects reflecting its affinity to or unity with material processes. Such a unity clearly shows up, for instance, in notion "conscious activity" which also covers practical acts and well demonstrates the distinctions between the categories of consciousness and the ideal, the difference of their logical functions. Indeed, one can assert with good reason that practical deeds are conscious activity, yet it will not be correct to say that practical activity is ideal. It is material activity. In this particular case there is no logical antithesis between the notions of consciousness and material activity which clearly reveals itself between the notions of material activity and the ideal.

p This alone shows that the category of the ideal is not a duplicate of the category of consciousness as it performs its own specific logical functions and, as will be shown later, has its own world-view, theoretical and methodological values. The close affinity of these categories, their contiguity does not 16 change this basic fact. True, each category of dialectical materialism reveals its content only through other categories, but this cannot by any means be adduced as an argument in support of the view that a category predicable of another category as one of its aspects is completely absorbed by the latter. The relationship of the categories of consciousness and the ideal is indeed specific due to the great affinity of these categories, yet there is no ground to consider this relationship unique. Similarly, the close affinity of the categories of necessity and law does not mean that one of them should be eliminated.

p The category of the ideal is indispensable in all those philosophical contexts where consciousness, the spiritual is logically (in one and the same sense) counterposed to the material. Such is the context of the basic question of philosophy where the notion of consciousness coincides with the notion of the ideal. This logical antithesis represents the essence of the basic philosophical question and is the starting point of a growing system of philosophical knowledge.

p Marxist philosophy is a complex dynamic system, a living and developing doctrine. It is subject to constant enrichment and change, and there are no hard and fast lines between its component parts. The processes of internal differentiation and integration attest to the emergence of new problems and reflect the results of their investigation, and this leads not only to local, but to very broad structural transformations inside the edifice of philosophical knowledge affecting the relationships between its historically established departments.

p Such departments of Marxist philosophy are dialectical and historical materialism making an organic whole and forming the bed-rock of Marxism-Leninism, ethics, aesthetics, scientific atheism, etc. The questions of their relationships fall beyond the scope of the present work. For our purpose it is important to stress that alongside the firmly established departments there exists, so to speak, a periphery of philosophical knowledge as a whole, and of its separate departments. Lacking a definite shape and affiliation, this periphery nevertheless represents vital links between the departments of philosophy proper and non- philosophical knowledge, primarily different branches of natural science, humanities, mathematical and technical disciplines. Due regard to this specific feature of the structure of philosophical 17 knowledge is of paramount importance for understanding the development of philosophy, its fruitful connection with life, as well as for analysis of the content and functions of philosophical categories, the categories of the material and the ideal inclusive. These questions will subsequently receive detailed consideration in the light of the problem of the ideal.

p At this stage we shall only stress that the relationship of the categories of the ideal and the material provides the conceptual framework of the problems located, so to speak, both in the centre and on the fringes of philosophical knowledge, and that therefore the category of the ideal constitutes an indispensable component of the logical structure of any philosophical investigation irrespective of whether the investigator himself is aware of its presence in his reasoning. However, in contrast with some specific research where the category of the ideal is but implicit and need not necessarily come into the limelight, an investigation into fundamental problems of philosophy and a large number of specific problems will hardly be successful unless the category of the ideal is subjected to a special theoretical analysis.

The content of this category only reveals itself vis-a-vis the category of the material wherefore we shall have to consider their relationship first, if only in very general terms.