The study is devoted to the problem of the philosophical status of the concept "unconscious". The central idea of the article is the idea about ex-tremely wide, generalizing nature of the concept ‘unconscious’, reaching philosophical category. Consideration unconscious as concrete and scientific concept, ignoring of its abstract, gnoseological character considerably is impoverished by its informative opportunities at creation of an overall pic- ture of consciousness and unconscious. Sometimes researchers manage to reach a certain level of generalization unconscious, but, as a rule, it is not beyond concrete and scientific generalization. So, for example, the look on unconscious as all-psychological concept within concrete science (in particu-lar, psychology) is represented perspective. But if to estimate unconscious from the world, methodological outlooks, by similar consideration out of sight there are its manifestations in the sphere of public life which the ac-count helping to reach the integrity of reflection of a phenomenon ‘uncon-scious’, so to reflect high extent of generalization of concept unconscious. In the article the ideas of thinkers (Avtonomova N.S., Vygotsky L.S., Ilyenkov E.V., Krechmer V., Mac-Intyre A.., Abramov S.S., etc.), testifying in favor of the gnoseological status of concept ‘unconscious’. According to the problem of philosophical definition unconscious the author concerns the question of criteria of a philosophical category. In this foreshortening philosophical def-inition of the unconscious is carried out.