Abstract

The article attempts to explain the difficulty of systematization of philosophical categories. Philosophical categories are defined as common forms of cognitive and world view attitude of the man to the nature, society and his own existence. The article also analyses basic approaches to the process of creating the system of philosophical categories in the history of philosophical thought. The review of the major historical phases of philosophical interpretation of categories allows to state the existence of the problematic issue connected with forming the system of categories. A lot of attempts have been undertaken on this subject. All of them were found controversial. It can be explained by the fact that all the attempts to systematize categories contradict the following principles - if categories are universal reflection forms of objective characteristics of existence, then their hierarchy must be the reflection of these characteristics’ hierarchy. But it is impossible to imagine that the "hierarchy" principle operates in the system of being, because the objective world is organized rather on the principle of "equality" than "subordination". The article addresses functional and developmental characteristics of philosophical categories. The article gives the author`s understanding of the concept of "philosophical categories"