This work provides a lexical-semantic and conceptual-semantic analysis of the ethical concepts «goodness» and «evilness» as basic-level categories. It is shown, the scientific notion «concept» and «category» are the final products of two successive stages of cognition, that is, conceptualization and categorization, the concepts «goodness» and «evilness», acting as prototypes within the framework of the key idea of the Russian language picture of the world ‘nuances of human relations’, possess lexical-semantic and conceptual-semantic features that correspond to all criteria of basic level of categorization. It is concluded, the concepts «goodness» and «evilness», considered both ethical concepts and basic-level categories, are both some kind of objective invariants and subjective moral ideas that have a source of conscience, and key moral guidelines in the «good - bad» value scale.
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